How To Leverage the Benefits of Email Automation for Your Projects and Teams

The average worker spends 209 minutes a day checking their work email. That’s nearly 3.5 hours each day spent checking, sorting, and responding to emails, not including the time it takes to communicate tasks to team members across other platforms. If you find that your team is spending too much time going through emails, you should consider implementing email automation.  

Email automation can help increase the efficiency of your team’s workflow by reducing time-consuming tasks, expediting response times, and improving collaboration. This article will explore the many benefits of email automation and how your team can leverage them. 

What Is Email Automation?

Email automation is the act of automating processes through a predetermined set of actions to reduce manual tasks. Automation allows team members to streamline labor-intensive tasks and to save time and improve workflow. For example, your team may use Google Groups or a shared inbox to manage incoming emails. This may involve your team having eyes on an inbox tied to one email address, for example, support@ or info@. 

When using email automation, you can expedite manual tasks. For example, creating rules and adjusting settings to automatically send or assign emails and tasks to appropriate team members can optimize project collaboration. While this method of email automation can be great to address customer support inquiries, it is also highly beneficial for your internal team. 

The Benefits of Email Automation

With modern technology, everyone is looking for a faster and easier way to get work done. Words become acronyms, and phone conversations become texts. Emails are no exception to this. While email can eliminate the need for a lengthy discussion and immediate response, email overload can distract from critical job responsibilities. Enter email automation. 

Email automation can help minimize legwork by using technology to automate responses and delegate assignments. Automated processes can help companies improve productivity and save time on menial tasks to allow more time to collaborate efficiently. Email automation saves time and increases your team's productivity by reducing gruntwork to have more time for everyday tasks. Email automation can help your team:

Delegate Tasks

Email is the prime source for many companies to receive tasks from clients or internal team members. The task is then communicated to other team members by forwarding or cc'ing the email or copying and pasting it into a project management tool. On top of this, you may need to send follow-up emails or messages to ensure they have received the assignment and understand the due date. These messages might involve different platforms (like Slack or Google chat), adding more variables.

This process alone can take valuable time out of your day. While the few minutes it may take doesn’t seem long, you often need to coordinate more than one assignment each day. Before you know it, half of your day has been designated to forwarding emails and delegating duties. 

When using a shared or collaborative inbox, email automation allows incoming emails to be assigned to a specific team member based on the criteria of the email, such as the subject line or email content.

For example, suppose the head of the support team is designated to address support questions and tasks. In that case, the email can be automated to go directly to that team member's inbox if the contents or subject line include the word "support." Email automation allows for easier delegation to hold team members accountable for their tasks to eliminate the hassle of forwarding and cc'ing emails. 

Manage Projects Collaboratively

Managing projects can become very difficult when working as a remote or hybrid team. While Zoom and Google Meet can help bring team members together, it is not the same as meeting in person. This may cause you to seek an online project management tool to help delegate assignments and allow team members to see what needs to be completed and when. 

Using Gmail, you may have utilized Google Workspace or other functionalities to manage projects. This may require you to search for other apps outside the Gmail platform to manage projects. 

The solution?

Find a project management tool that integrates with your team's Gmail to help organize projects and collaborate via one platform. Gmelius, an email collaboration tool, works directly within your Gmail inbox to assign emails as tasks, which can then be implemented into Gmail Kanban boards.

Kanban boards offer a visual workspace for your team to assign task cards and see the progress of a project. Automation can be utilized with a Gmail Kanban board by automatically assigning columns and adjusting settings. Once a project gets completed, the status is updated in real time. Team members can be assigned task cards and receive notifications regarding the status of their project. 

Work Without Distractions

Each day, an overflow of tasks can crowd your inbox. It may be difficult to address each one. And everyone works differently. Some may choose to snooze all notifications while working on a task to eliminate distractions.

Others may feel the need to address each email as it comes through to reduce inbox clutter and stay alert to incoming inquiries. Automation helps teams to have the best of both worlds. For instance, you can set up automated messages if team members have questions, but you know they will not need immediate responses. Here’s an example: 

“I have received your message and will be in touch as soon as possible.”

This lets the sender know their message has made it to your inbox and will be addressed accordingly. The beauty of asynchronous communication is that colleagues do not expect an immediate reply if they send you an email. Now you can handle inquiries when you are ready and eliminate incoming emails as distractions. 

Save Time 

Email automation can help to reduce the time it takes to respond to emails and delegate assignments to give you and your team much-needed time back in your day. Automation can reduce the time spent checking emails by sending programmed responses and automatically assigning tasks to streamline your workflow and allow you to focus on more urgent tasks. 

Automate Your Workflow With Gmelius

Now that we have discussed the benefits of email automation, you may be wondering how to implement such a process for your team. Email automation can be implemented with Gmelius, an email collaboration tool that fits right inside your Gmail platform, so there's no need to switch back and forth between apps, simplifying collaboration across your company all within Gmail. Using Gmelius will enable you to: 

• Put your operations on autopilot by automating day-to-day processes across multiple platforms. 
• Setup auto-replies to streamline tasks and improve response times. 
• Set time-based targets with SLA rules to ensure your teams prioritize high-value conversations and meet internal performance goals. 

The benefits of email automation are endless and can create powerful results for your team. When considering your next email management tool that involves automation to work more collaboratively, consider Gmelius. Reduce unnecessary time spent on emails and improve your team's workflow with Gmelius' email management tool.

The benefits of email automation can greatly impact how your team collaborates on projects. Check out our features and integrations and learn how Gmelius is built to improve team communication and collaboration. Ready to get started? Sign up today!