Most organizations don’t manage their email very well – and there are a number of white papers out there about how to archive everything, or how to manage email messages as records, or the value of outsourcing email, etc. But very few of them address the reason why email is so out of control – us! Most of us don’t use email very effectively, whether on an individual message basis or in managing our inboxes. So the focus of this post is on steps you can take to be more effective in how you manage your email.

Individual steps

1.       Close your email client. The vast majority of us keep our email client open all day long, just in case an important message comes in. This leaves us vulnerable to distraction every time a message comes in, whether it's that important note from the boss, an invitation to a webinar that may or may not be of interest, or an update on next week's potluck.

2.       Turn off alerts. If you can’t close your email client you can minimize it, but it doesn’t help if it pops up an alert every time one of those messages comes in. So turn off the alerts. If you don’t want to turn them off completely because you might miss an important email, set up specific alerts for, say, messages from your boss or the project team you’re working with. And turn off the rest of the alerts.

3.       Set specific times to check your email. Some argue NOT to check your email first thing in the morning - because you'll look up and find you've already wasted hours on it. Others insist they have to check it first in case something urgent came up overnight. Regardless, by setting up times and adhering to them, you'll greatly reduce the distraction of email.

4.       Touch each message only once. This is the hallmark of the email management = time management movement as espoused by David Allen's Getting Things Done, Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero, and many others. The point is to act on a message when you get it: file it, respond to it, take action related to it, defer it, delete it, etc. The usual caveats about records management apply; the point is that you don't keep all your email in the inbox until it becomes too overwhelming. 

5.       Reduce the amount of bacn you consume. Bacn is a term coined in 2007 to describe "email you want, but not right now." It refers to updates from vendors, announcements from your local AIIM or ARMA chapter, the Dilbert cartoon-of-the-day, etc. It's not spam, but if you can't get to it it won't directly impact your job.

6.       Set up rules and filters. Positive rules can be used to draw your attention to an important message – for example, when you receive a message from your boss or the project team, the email client shows an alert, puts it in a special folder, or even opens it so you can’t miss it. Negative rules can be used to keep stuff out of your way – for example, by setting up rules to move messages from the RECMGMT-L email list or your mom’s jokes into special folders.

7.       Don't use email as a filing cabinet. Too many of us keep all of our email because that's where our documents live - as attachments. Some will even email documents to themselves, creating attachments in order to save them in the email system. Email systems are designed to send, route, receive, and store messages for short periods - they are not designed to be the final repository for information. The more email stored, the worse the system performs, which is why email archiving was initially so popular. They are not designed to optimize findability. And it is extraordinarily difficult to use them to manage messages that should be treated as records. Finally, many organizations still have mailbox size limits, and when that limit is reached because of the volume of attachments stored, too many users simply delete by size rather than by value or importance.

Note that this is a good transition because it’s an organizational issue as well.

Organizational steps

8.       Update the policy. Many organizations have policies that address appropriate usage – for example, they prohibit sending racist, sexist, or other offensive materials through email. But there are a number of other things the policy can and should address, including legal issues, effective usage, encryption and security, personal email accounts, and many others. And it should go without saying that this will also require that users be trained on the policy and how to comply with it.

9.       Be realistic. There are often two problems associated with effective email management. First, the organization tries to do too much at once. Just as a records program cannot go from a standing start to world class overnight, an email management initiative will have a lot of moving parts. Many of these will be analogous to the records program: development and implementation of a classification structure, development of a governance framework, selection and implementation of technology, training, etc.

The other challenge is that users are not professional information managers. Too often the organization decrees that users will manage their email appropriately, and then implements a process that requires users to click ten times, fill in 27 metadata fields, and take 30-60 seconds or more to classify a message. This is hard enough for the handful of documents users create in a day; it’s all but impossible for the 100-150 or more messages users receive. Do the math – at only 30 seconds each, this is 50-75 minutes a day just to classify messages. The process of managing email should be made as absolutely simple as possible: streamline classification schemes, use technology to hide irrelevant “buckets”, and integrate email management or records management tools into the email client in such a way that the users don’t really notice. All of these will make it more likely that users actually comply with the program.

10.   Reduce colleague spam, both what you send and what you receive. This means paying attention to the CC: and especially BCC: functionality. Consider whether someone really needs to be informed of the contents of the message or if it's just an exercise in covering yourself. This is especially true when it comes to the "Reply All" button, which is so abused that some organizations have taken the step of configuring their email systems to turn that capability off. If your staff CC:s you on everything, consider whether you actually read those CC:ed messages.

11.   Reduce attachment spam. Just as not everyone in the organization needs to receive a copy of a given message, not everyone in the thread needs to receive all the attachments associated with the thread. Attachments can take up a lot of space in the inbox; more importantly, as attachments proliferate it becomes increasingly difficult to determine which one is the most current. One way to address both of these concerns is to send links rather than attachments.

12.   Use meaningful subject lines. Blank subject lines often end up in the Junk Mail or Spam folder. But too often the subject line is either very generic, such as “Stuff”, “Friday”, “Our discussion from yesterday”, etc. – or it’s the same subject line from 20 messages ago, even though the focus of the discussion has changed several times in the interim. Almost all email clients can follow threads without keeping the subject line the same. Better subject lines also lead to better responsiveness because the recipient can determine how quickly a response is needed and can be provided. And better subject lines make it easier to locate a message later should it become necessary.

13.   Use the right tool for the job. Email is a horrible tool for most of the uses we put it to. Consider how users collaborate through email: it's a flurry of attachment spam, "did you get my email?" messages, "which is the right version?" traffic, etc. Wikis are much better tools for collaboration. Or consider all the broadcast-type announcements you get, whether from vendors, your HR staff, or your friendly neighborhood association chapter. Blogs (and more recently Twitter) are a great way to stay informed about that type of information without having it clutter your inbox. That's how I get my information. It's not that email is a bad tool - it's just that what it's really good for is one-to-one or one-to-few communication. Use other tools for other uses.

14.   Implement email management technology. There’s a reason this is the last in the list. Without all the other things already mentioned, technology will only give the organization a false sense of security and may actually make it more difficult to manage email effectively. It’s also important to know exactly what the technology can and cannot do and how it does it. Just because a solution claims to archive all emails and produce them when needed, it does not mean that the solution is easy to use, integrates with the records management application, or can be accessed by all clients and devices. Due diligence and research is vital here, as is determining the organization’s business and functional requirements. 

Questions about email management? Contact me.