Make The Most Of Your Gmail Inbox in 2020 – A Step By Step Guide

Use An Email Address Extractor

The Google Suite offers an email address extractor feature which you can install here. This tool extracts email addresses and names from the emails landing in your inbox. It then saves this data into Google Sheets where it can later be imported into other email services - such as Mailchimp or Google Contacts. This is super handy for businesses who rely on networking - it can save you a lot of time carrying out admin tasks and extracting data manually.

Use Labels

A great way to begin organising your mailbox is to implement labels! These labels will allow you to quickly categories different emails based on various points. For example: different subjects, clients, or projects. Once you have created a label, it will appear in the sidebar. When you click on it, you will be able to view all emails attached to that label.

Follow these steps to add labels to your inbox:

Use Sub-Labels

Once you have created labels, you can then go on to create sub-labels. This is excellent for organising separate categories within a wider category. For example, you may have a one client - your label - which involves several different projects - your sub-labels.

Follow these steps to add sub-labels to your inbox:

Use Tabs

At the top of your inbox, you will - by default - have three tabs: Primary, Social, and Promotions. These are super handy for separating your emails and keeping your ‘Primary’ inbox tidy. However, you can actually add more tabs here by following these steps:

Use Markers & Enable Automatic Marking

You can use markers to quickly mark emails as ‘important’ by clicking the chevron shape to the left of the email, which will toggle it to yellow.

Additionally, you can enable automatic marking. Gmail's settings allow you to select the option for gmail to predict which messages should be marked as important, based on your past actions. Gmail will gradually learn which types of emails should be marked by your standards, and will begin to automatically do so.

Follow these stops to enable automatic marking:

Use Stars

Using stars is another super simple, yet effective way to organise your inbox. These can be seen next to the chevron marker we mentioned above. You can add up to 12 different star colours by following the steps below - this will allow you to organise your emails quickly with your own colour coding system.

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Use Automatic Filters

In your Gmail settings, you can create filters using certain criteria. You can then choose what happens to the emails that fit into this filter. Once applied, these filters will automatically segment your emails as they enter your inbox. For example: you could create a filter which causes any emails from a certain email address or containing certain words, to be automatically marked as read or deleted.

Follow these steps to use automatic filters:

Making The Most Of Your Outbox

Use Email Segmentation

If you use email marketing for your business, then email segmentation could be super handy for you. Email segmentation is an email marketing technique which allows you to split up your email subscriber list based on various conditions or data points. This technique is used by businesses to ensure that the content they are sending is relevant to their specific email recipients.

This will provide your audience with an individualised experience rather than a mass medium. Plus, it makes your email marketing strategies far more cost effective. You’ll have to take the time to craft targeted campaigns, but these campaigns will lead to higher success rates. Accurate segmentation and targeted emails can really help to turn your business around!

How To Segment Your Email Audience:

Decide what data points you will use to separate your different customers.

This could include their location, whether they are a new or existing customer, how often they open and engage with your emails, and a lot more

Set up your segments.

You can do this super easily using a tool like Mailchimp or Vero.

Create Your Content

Now you can create specialised email marketing campaigns which will appeal to the individual audience segments you have defined previously. You can send your emails using the tools that you used to set up the segments.

Track Your Success.

You will now want to receive metrics to find out how well your segmentation is working! Track your emails on factors such as the open rates, the click through rates, and the conversion rates. This will help you to improve your future segmentation efforts.

And there you have it! A step-by-step guide to making the most of your inbox, and your outbox! We hope these quick tips help you to stay organised with your networking and improve the success rate of your emailing efforts.