How will I remember all these tips?

One way that many clients find works well is to create an easy charter or code of best practice. Either I help them develop one specific to their business or they adopt one based on the charter I have created. Called the ‘Nine Ps of Smart Email Management’, this book is based on it.

For your own copy of the ‘Nine Ps of Smart Email Management’ send an email to [email protected] with the subject line of ‘Nine Ps checklist-EOM’.

The Nine Ps of Smart Email Management

How much can I expect to gain from using email more effectively?

Does it work? People and organisations I have worked with quickly find themselves able to save time. How much depends on your starting point. Some of you may already be quite good at dealing with email and just need to top up your skills. Others starting at the bottom of the ladder can expect to save at least one hour a day.

How can I keep my mailbox under control?

Once you put all you have learnt into practice, you will notice your productivity increasing and that you have reclaimed your life from the mailbox. However, change does not happen overnight and it is easy to slip back into bad habits. Perhaps you will stop regular mailbox housekeeping and your emails may start to become sloppy. Projects, responsibilities and interests change. You will need to re-prioritise and re-look at some of the tips. Go back and look at sections you previously skipped over.

For reminders and more tips and hints you can also:

What about my colleagues?

However, all this will not stop your colleagues behaving badly with email. This includes internal and external colleagues, clients and prospects, advisers, etc. You will need to educate them too. This will enable you to sustain and make further productivity gains as shown below.

Benefits of changing email behaviour

Push back those emails you don’t need and which fall short of being brilliant. Ask questions such as the following:

Start small by educating your inner circle. Then spread the word further afield. Several clients use either my ‘Nine Ps of Smart Email Management’ charter or one I developed for them and their trading partners and customers to help them all work more productively.

Is email here to stay?

As social media continues to infiltrate our lives, some commentators suggest we will soon see the death of email, especially because the younger generations seem tethered to Facebook and text messaging. Yet volumes of email are generally predicted to continue to rise by about 10 per cent year on year. (Part of this rise is due to more users expected to come online, especially from developing countries.)

In my opinion, we will see social networking becoming more dominant (both in business and socially) for ephemeral messages and general chit-chat. However, email will continue to be the dominant electronic communications medium (particularly for exchanges which may form part of an audit trail). Indeed, just look at how we receive status updates to our social media sites. A personal Twitter message even comes by email!

This book was written amid all the talk of entering an age of austerity. If there is one single area where time and money can be saved, it is in making email work for you and your business rather than letting it eat uninvited into your valuable time and resources.

For more resources go to www.brilliant-email.com. You can also email me with problems and your tips and hints ([email protected]).

Now go do some Brilliant Emailing. Good luck.