How many emails do you get a day? 10? 50? 200? These numbers are growing daily according to Fast Company Magazine, they estimate that “the average worker receives 200 a day.” If you are only using Microsoft Outlook this can mean that organization is difficult since Outlook treats all messages the same. This can cause problems because some emails, like notes from your boss are more important than newsletters or jokes of the day.
Luckily with the wealth of free knowledge and tools on the Internet, we have found a few tools to help organize email:
1) Zimbra Desktop (just released out of BETA and is Free) – Unlimited email storage is great but searching through thousands of emails is a hassle. The Conversation Views and Message Tags automatically highlight important emails in all your email accounts so you can find anything in a hurry. Advanced Search makes finding important pictures, documents or messages from people you care about a snap. Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop combines the best aspects of existing email clients (also known as POP or IMAP email clients) with modern web mail applications to make a totally new and improved experience. Nowhere else will you find an application with full email, contact, calendar, document management and offline access features for free!
2) ClearContext (Free for personal use, $90 per seat for project management) – offers the most immediate productivity gains. This is an Outlook add-on that understands who you’re replying to and how often and it automatically prioritizes the messages. It even color-codes the most pressing ones! and greys out mass emails. These are only a few small changes, but they make a big difference in prioritization and colors really brighten up your inbox!
3) ActiveWords ($30 per person annually) – This program helps you template our common email answers! This is an time-saver if you interact with customers and are commonly answering the same questions over and over.
There are of course other tools out there, but these are the tools that we are using here at MxToolBox. We are always looking for new and improved ways to organize email and increase efficiency!
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