Business email users send and receive 121 emails a day on average, according to research by The Radicati Group. Another report conducted by Mckinsey Global Institute says the average business professional spends 13 hours a week reading, sending, sorting and deleting those emails.
This has been compounded by the rapid shift to wireless devices such as cellphones and tablets with increased coverage, permanently tethered us to our email accounts. We now send and receive a colossal amount of information, and as data plan prices keep reducing, that’s only going to increase.
Thirteen hours out of a typical 40-day workweek is way too much, and it’s probably one of the reasons why few people manage to complete their work in 40 hours.
Email is our go-to way of staying connected in today’s workplace, and while it is tremendously convenient, as the data usage stats show, it can also be overwhelming to manage.
Here are five apps that make it a whole lot less stressful and more efficient to manage your email:
1. SaneBox
No need to download or install any software to utilize SaneBox’s full suite of productivity tools. This program works on top of your existing email, and “learns” how to categorize emails through Smart Filtering, based on your previous actions. Easily block out senders you never want to hear from again by dragging emails into the SaneBlackHole folder or use the Snooze Folder to store non-urgent emails until you are ready to deal with them. Packages start at $7 per month.
2. MailBox
Quickly organize your messages by archiving or trashing them with a mere swipe of your finger, or scan entire email conversations in a chat-like view. Use the snooze feature to schedule emails for a time when you can process them. The Auto-swipe function actually learns your preferences and automates common actions. Available as a free download.
3. Postbox
Using the Focus Pane, you can break your emails down by priority attributes, date, contact or topic. In addition, because Postbox captures messages from various folders and presents them in a unified view, you can more quickly bring yourself up to speed and jump into conversation threads. Postbox also offers a convenient "Unsubscribe" link in each message header, making it super simple to clean up unwanted incoming messages. The cost is $15.
4. Spark
Spark pulls from all of your email accounts and automatically categorizes your emails, making it easy for you to process your incoming messages. Swipe to “pin” your priority messages, and snooze others that aren’t urgent. And the application automatically sorts your email into personal, newsletter and notification boxes so that important messages from real contacts don’t get buried among other messages. Available on iOS for free download.
5. Inky
This cloud-based free application for Windows and iTunes allows you to rank emails from 1-10, based on your personal preferences. The application learns your ranking patterns and automatically sorts incoming messages so that you don’t have to weed through the unimportant ones. For example, “daily deal” ads are filtered to one location and notifications from your social media are filtered into another where you can review them in one place, at your convenience.
Stop wasting your precious time battling your inbox, and use that time to focus on your business instead. Use an email management application to increase your productivity and take the stress out of managing your email.