Operation Inbox

Clean Up Your Email

By Geneva Ives on Aug 6, 2013 in Technology

Take a minute to think about your email inbox. Visualize it.

Did your heart rate go up? A recent study conducted by the University of California, Irvine attached heart rate monitors to two test groups of workers – one with access to email and the other without – and found that those with email access had steady “high alert” heart rates. The group without email access reported feeling less stressed and better able to focus on the tasks at hand.

Yikes! But we need our email, right? If you’re in real estate or property management, the answer is yes. From clients wanting to set up appointments to property notifications to contract updates, a ton of useful information lands in your inbox each and every day.

So how can you shrink both your inbox and your stress levels? We’ve got three tips and three tools that will help you manage the constant influx of emails generated by today’s 24/7 real estate industry.

3 Steps to Optimize Your Inbox

1.    Priorities, schmiorities

Having a strategy that allows you to sort your email quickly is key. Start by deleting the obviously unnecessary emails in your inbox. Are there emails you’d like to read later that don’t require a response, like newsletters or special offers? Create a folder with a title like “Read Later” and move these emails out of your inbox.

Next, go down the list and tackle any email you can reply to in two minutes or less, no matter the level of urgency. Better to deal with minor concerns and get emails out of the way than to leave them lurking in your inbox until later.

Finally, use your sorting filter to flip your inbox so the oldest emails appear at the top. Working backwards like this will ensure that you address emails that you have accidently let slide to the bottom of the pile.

2.    Nip it in the bud

Foster an environment of offline communication and stem the flow of interoffice email by setting up a series of weekly meetings with key team players.  These meetings create reliable decision-making opportunities in which participants know their projects and interests will be immediately addressed.

Ask assistants and other attendees to only email in the interim if something is urgent. Your inbox will be spared from an excess of non-urgent emails, and your associates will be pleased knowing there is a day they can count on getting answers, instead of sending more emails into the great abyss.

3.    Week end wrap-up

Set aside the last half an hour or so of the last day of your week for quiet inbox reflection and organization. Is there anything you’ve been avoiding? Tackle that email now so you can go into the weekend with a clear head. Try to finish the day with only items that require action in your inbox, so you can start Monday with a clean to-do list… once you’ve sorted through the weekend influx anyway (see step #1).

3 Tools to Manage It All

1.    SaneBox

Touted as “email management for any inbox,” SaneBox will help you reduce the time spent processing emails with the help of advanced filtering and sorting tools. SaneBox automatically filters out unimportant emails, moves them to a separate folder and summarizes them for you so you can make at-a-glance decisions. You can also defer selected emails to a later date, set reminders for emails the require responses and send emails to the SaneBlackHole to ensure that you never receive anything from that sender again.

SaneBox works on desktops, laptops, phones and tablets – basically anywhere that you check your email. Monthly subscriptions range from $2 – $20.

2.    Evernote

Archive elegantly – and for free – with Evernote. If storage and organization concerns are part of your inbox woes, use Evernote to help sort things out. Forward emails you want to keep for reference to your dedicated Evernote email address to place them in any of your cloud-based Evernote notebooks for storage. You can also send tweets, webpages and other content there, making it easy to create project or relationship-based folders you can access at any time, from  almost any Internet-enabled device. A great solution for all that “already read but gotta keep” stuff that’s jamming up your email.

3.    NudgeMail

NudgeMail is a free service that ‘nudges’ you with the emails you want, when you want them. How does this work? Simply write or forward any email to [email protected] with the time or date you want it back in your inbox as the subject line, e.g. August 30, 2013. NudgeMail then sends the email back when you want it. This is an easy way to get those emails out of your inbox that don’t need to be dealt with immediately. Or to send yourself a reminder at a crucial time. No signup required.

And finally, don’t forget the oft-repeated ‘Rule of Three.’ If more than three emails have passed between you and your correspondent without becoming any closer to a resolution, it’s time to pick up the phone or schedule a meeting.

How do you reign in your real estate inbox? Share your tips below!

Editors’ note: Geneva Ives is the marketing writer for Point2, a leading provider of online marketing solutions for real estate professionals, including custom websites, syndication tools and prospecting utilities. She will be contributing technology-oriented real estate posts to The Balance Sheet.