Overwhelmed by too many emails and looking for a way to simplify your inbox? This presentation covers different ways to reduce your inbox and increase productivity by taking advantage of the more advanced functions such as setting up rules, creating signatures, and more.

1. Conquer Your Inbox

2. Npower Northwest
• Vision: a thriving community with high
performing nonprofits
• Mission: to strengthen the nonprofit sector
by catalyzing innovation and driving adoption
of technology solutions

3. Introductions
Elissa Thomas
HandsOn Tech Corps AmeriCorps VISTA
Serving at NPower Northwest
vistastaff@npowernw.org

4. Road Map
• Email Issues
• Strategies
• Tools & Tips
• Q&A

6. Communication flood
2011 statistics:
3.1 billion email accounts worldwide.
112 emails sent and received each day
by the average corporate user.
71% of worldwide email traffic was spam.

7. Time management
Constant interruptions saps productivity

8. Email organization
How do you find specific messages?

10. Email Bankruptcy
Communication overload from flood of
unanswered messages can lead to
temptation to delete entire inbox.

11. 4 D’s
Delete it
Do it
Delegate it
Defer it

12. “Zero Inbox”
Strategy to keep your inbox at bay.
“How to reclaim your email,
your attention, and your life.”

13. The email-less organization
Some companies are now banning email
or seeking to limit internal emails.
• Atos will phase out email by 2014.
• Volkswagen will no longer email after hours.

14. Determine when to NOT use email
Can you use other tools for the following?
1. Coordinating schedules
2. Document collaboration
3. Managing projects
4. Group decision-making

16. Productive routines
Set specific times to go into your email

17. Rules/Filters
• Outlook Rules and color-coded categories
• Gmail Priority Inbox and address filters
• Mac Mail 5 Rules
• Auto-filter!

18. Gmail additional filters
• Gmail users get many address variations.
• Delivered to same inbox.
• username+tag@gmail.com
• Makes it easy to add a filter or label for
messages sent to those variations.

19. Searching
• How to search like a pro in Gmail
• Search tips for Outlook

20. Spam
• Most email providers like Gmail and Outlook
have effective spam filters.
• If you host your own email server, you
need to look into spam filter services.
• When you get spam, report it!

21. Auto-response
“Vacation rule”
Let people know you can’t respond right away

22. “Canned” responses
• Gmail Labs services include canned emails.
(Settings -> Labs -> Canned Responses)
• Outlook “Quick Parts”: text segments you can
easily insert into an email.
• Business services like MailTank automate
sending email messages.

23. Managing multiple accounts
• You can add other accounts to your main
Gmail account without having to log out and
log back in repeatedly.
• Outlook can be configured to receive emails
from other accounts, including
Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc.

24. Scheduling emails
Create when you have time…
…Goes out at the right time

26. Twitter with your email
• TwinBox plugin for Outlook adds a Twitter toolbar.
• You can automatically sort incoming messages based
on specific hash tags.
• Includes URL shortening.
• Allows managing
multiple accounts.

27. Keyboard shortcuts
Adds seconds back to your life. The seconds add up.

28. Best invention ever
In Gmail, there is an “undo send” option.

29. Resources
• NPower Northwest Knowledge Center
• Microsoft at Work blog
• Zero Inbox tips
• Become a Gmail Ninja
• How to Unclutter Your Outlook Inbox webinar

30. Thank You
Elissa Thomas
HandsOn Tech AmeriCorps VISTA
vistastaff@npowernw.org
HandsOn Tech Corps Seattle
NPower Northwest
www.npowernw.org

31. Q&A