While social media and text messaging seem to be the primary ways we communicate with everyone today, your email inbox plays a huge role in business communications.
And although social media marketing is the most talked about way to grow your business, the numbers have always shown that when it comes to actually closing the deal with new customers, email is more effective.
So if you’ve been ignoring your email inbox as one of your primary business tools, it’s time to change that.
Email has lost the excitement it first generated when the internet was new and we jumped with anticipation every time AOL chimed in with, “You’ve got mail.”
Now, we know we have mail.
Way too much mail, in fact.
Because everywhere we go and with everything we do, we’re asked to give up our email address.
So if you shopped at Doggie Treats Deluxe one time in your life, you now find yourself getting emails from them for the rest of your life.
On the other hand, your kids' teachers may communicate almost exclusively by email, your favorite clothing store may send out 50% off coupons by email, and most all of your substantial business dealings are going to involve email.
How do you manage it all in a way that keeps you productive and keeps your work at home business from taking over your life?
Because it’s such a huge problem for so many of us, there are an endless number of solutions out there. Today we’re going to cover five that are especially helpful for small business owners.
1. Unroll.me
The best place to start is by getting rid of all of those email subscriptions you have that you aren’t interested in.
Yes, you could go through and hit the tiny little “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of each email, but that wouldn’t be a very productive use of your time.
And fortunately, there’s a much faster way to solve your problem, and it’s called Uroll.me.
At Unroll.me, you’ll see a list of all of your subscription emails. With one click, you instantly subscribe from whatever you don’t want.
You can also combine subscriptions you do want, but don’t need popping up into your inbox all day, into one email called the rollup.
You decide what time to have this digest of your favorite subscriptions delivered to your inbox, and it appears on your command with everything in one place.
Scheduling your email time and productively managing your email just became so much easier.
Boomerang is a great tool for effectively managing your emails without becoming overwhelmed and losing track of them.
With Boomerang, you can snooze emails for later, which as the app points out, helps you remember to pay upcoming bills, follow-up with clients that don’t reply, and stay on top of any email you won’t need until later.
Once installed, you’ll see a Boomerang button appear at the top of each message, allowing you to snooze the message for a number of hours, days, weeks, or until any specific time you enter.
The email then does you the favor of disappearing from your inbox until the time you’ve summoned it back.
3. Spark
Spark advertises itself as a tool that lets you take control of your inbox by instantly seeing what’s important and cleaning up the rest.
For starters, the app sorts your emails into personal, newsletter, and notification boxes.
The real magic to this app however is the way in which it lets you personalize your email experience.
Spark has a feature that allows you to snooze emails until you’re ready to deal with them, allows you to schedule emails to be sent later, and provides reminders to follow-up on important emails.
You can also set notifications to alert you when an important email comes in.
Spark also has a good number of integrations that will make dealing with emails easier and faster, including Dropbox, iCloud, Evernote, Google Drive, Pocket, and Readability, along with a nice feature that allows you to save information-packed emails as a PDF.
All of this is done from an interface that you can set up in a way that works best with your email workflow.
If you have a team that helps out in your business (and you will, eventually!), Spark for teams is an invaluable way to easily share and collaborate through email.
4. Shift
Gmail has really captured the market when it comes to email productivity and one of the best tools for out there for dealing with all things Gmail is Shift.
Shift allows you to switch between multiple Gmail accounts as well as Google Calendars and Google Drive accounts with just one click.
The latest version added unified search, which enables you to search for something across all of your accounts with just one search.
The app also supports Boomerang and Grammarly, as well as other non-Google productivity tools, and advertises that it is continuing to add new integrations to make it even more of a one-stop service.
5. SaneBox
And finally, if you’re willing to part with $2 a month (or a little more depending on your needs), you’ll likely find SaneBox to be a worthy option.
SaneBox prioritizes each email for you as it comes in, organizing it into folders like SaneArchive, SaneLater, SaneConnect, SaneNoReplies, and others you can create.
If the email is deemed important, it will stay in your inbox rather than being routed to a folder.
For the emails that are sent to folders, you’ll receive a digest that allows you to decide which are important and worthy of your attention.
Over time, the SaneBox experience gets better and better, as you train the automation how to deal with different incoming messages.
Another nice feature is SaneBlackHole, which allows you to drag emails into this folder causing the email to be deleted and automatically unsubscribing you from the sender.
SaneReminders allows you to send email reminders to yourself in the future, and SaneAttachments allows you to automatically upload attachments to your cloud storage service.
SaneBox offers a two week free trial and the option to cancel at anytime, although purchasing an annual plan does get you a 30% discount.
Do the Work Now and Save Time Forever
It does take a little effort to find the right system for you and to get used to doing things differently.
But, if you put in the time now, you’ll reap the rewards of increased productivity forever.
Each of the above five options are great places to start and will cut down on your search for the perfect solution from the many options out there.
And as always, if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, or one who’s looking to add another income stream, Kids Party Characters is here to help.
Owner Cheryl Jacobs started out as a single mom needing to feed her kids, and now has the experience and passion to help other moms looking for necessary or extra income.
Knowing how busy a mom’s life is, Cheryl has cut down the time and effort it takes to start your own business by offering membership to KidsPartyCharacters.com.
With membership, you’ll get an exclusive territory in which to book parties, and access to our 200+ costumes, as well as our acting coach and casting director.
You’ll also get step-by-step training and support from Cheryl on how to start your business the right way.
Schedule a free, no-pressure chat with Cheryl right here and let her help you figure out if this is the right opportunity for your life.
Want to know more about KidsPartyCharacters.com? Connect with us on Facebook for daily updates about the magic we bring to children’s parties as well as the strategies we’ve used to grow a six figure business.
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