Swamped with email? Save time with these filtering services…
Business or personal email….it doesn’t matter; there’s always just too much of it. Short of hiring a personal assistant, what can you do? Try these tips to keep you from drowning in email and wasting time bogged down trying to manage your inbox…
1. Get a Spam filter. Lots of companies like MacAffee, Barracuda Networks, and these companies offer software that blocks unwanted emails to leave you with a streamlined inbox.
2. Set up email rules. Emily Parks, owner of Organize for Success recommends putting your email software to work for you by setting up filtering “rules” that allow you to sort by person, subject, importance, keywords and move incoming emails directly into the trash or email subfolders so they avoid hitting your inbox altogether. Here are some instructions on how to set up email rules:
For PC users using Outlook: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000781.htm
For PC users using Google/Gmail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtaniuBpF6g
For Mac users:
http://www.hosting.com/support/email/create-email-filters-in-mac-os-x-mail–
http://think.stedwards.edu/computerhelp/macmailrulesandfiltering
3. Use an email filtering service. There are companies out there like Sanebox.com and AwayFind.com who, for a nominal fee, will filter, sort, and aggregate your emails so your inbox only receives the truly important ones. They claim you could save about 100 hours a year, and one of my business clients had this to say:
“Sanebox is well worth the low monthly price. I’ve got both my business and personal email accounts on it for about $7/mo. It has been very helpful in cutting down my email clutter so I can focus on the important/urgent ones and get back to the others later. Definitely worth recommending for most casual to medium volume email users. The “aggregation and prioritization” being done for me automatically is extremely productive and Sanebox has been worth it so far.
The only downside is that Sanebox ONLY prioritizes based on sender’s email address… so once you delegate an email from someone as not urgent/not important, it will ALWAYS file any emails from that sender that way. There is no way to prioritize or separate based on subject or any other factors other than sender’s address.
AwayFind.com appears to be much more advanced…and is also a bit pricier.”








