In a new era of working from home, teams must find ways to collaborate online more effectively to meet project demands. But with team members scattered all over the world, managing projects together becomes a challenge.

If your team does not efficiently organize incoming projects, you can expect inbox clutter, poor project management, and time lost from disorganized processes. Using inbox rules or filters to automatically sort emails into different folders can help manage emails more effectively. To help teams collaborate more efficiently on projects, here are some email management tips to streamline project workflows.

Email Management Tips 

Email project management helps teams and managers collaborate better through their inboxes. However, as client requests come pouring in, teams need to have a successful plan to tackle workload and easily organize projects. Managing email messages is crucial for effective email management, as it allows users to utilize rules to organize their inbox more effectively.

Additionally, managing email notifications is important to reduce distractions and enhance productivity. Turning off unnecessary email notifications can help focus on important tasks and optimize workflow.

Here are our top five email management tips to streamline your team’s project workflows.

What is Email Management?

Email management refers to the process of organizing, prioritizing, and controlling the flow of emails in your inbox. It involves using various techniques and tools to manage the volume of emails, reduce stress, and increase productivity. Effective email management enables you to focus on important tasks, respond to emails in a timely manner, and maintain a clean and organized inbox.

Setting Up Your Inbox

Setting up your inbox is the first step in effective email management. This involves creating folders, labels, and filters to categorize and prioritize your emails. You can also set up inbox rules to automatically sort and label incoming messages. Additionally, you can customize your email client to display only the most important information, such as unread messages or emails from a specific sender.

1. Use a Collaborative Shared Inbox with Inbox Rules

More than likely, every project begins with an email. Thus begins the arduous process of countless emails and endless Cc’ing and forwarding. If too many team members get involved in a chain of email threads, the project management process becomes difficult.

Enter shared inboxes. Shared inboxes are a solution for companies to help manage large sums of emails coming in at once so multiple team members can address incoming emails together. Utilizing canned responses to handle frequently asked questions and repetitive email replies can save time and ensure consistency in communication.

Traditional shared inboxes have limitations. Either too many people respond to the same email, or emails go unanswered because team members assume someone else has replied.

collaborative shared inbox takes the features of a traditional shared inbox to the next level. For example, teams can tag colleagues, leave notes, and assign emails as tasks to turn email management into an effective project management tool.

2. Schedule Efficiently with Email Notifications

Schedule coordination is critical to ensure deadlines are met and tasks remain on track. If your team uses Google Calendar, teams can view each other's availability to carve out time to discuss project details and coordinate assignments. 

For teams that operate remotely or with a hybrid model, video conferencing tools such as Google Meet are a part of your daily schedule.  

Gmelius, an email collaboration and communication tool for Gmail, offers integration options that combine Google Calendar with Meet. Teams can insert their availability into an email with an auto-populated Google Meet meeting link. 

Gmelius also offers a meeting scheduler tool native to Gmail to help teams share their calendar availability to expedite the scheduling process and eliminate the potential for rescheduling or canceling meetings. 

5. Prioritizing Emails

Prioritizing emails is crucial in email management. You can use various techniques to prioritize your emails, such as using flags, stars, or colors to indicate importance level. You can also use the two-minute rule, which involves responding to emails that can be dealt with in less than two minutes immediately. For emails that require more time or attention, you can add them to your to-do list or schedule a follow-up. By prioritizing your emails, you can focus on the most important messages and stay organized.

3. Utilize Organization Tools to Flag Messages

Teams can utilize email folders and labels to address incoming emails for better organization effectively. If a team has multiple emails regarding one project, emails can be categorized into a folder or label with the proper name pertaining to the assignment. Teams assigned to the project will have one folder to work out to view all requests.

Additionally, using the flag messages feature allows users to mark important emails for follow-up, ensuring those emails are easily tracked and not overlooked.

Applying filters and using labels and notes can help separate emails into the appropriate categories to declutter your inbox allowing teams to have more time to focus on projects.

4. Use Visual Project Management Tools 

As emails come pouring in regarding a project, your team may have trouble delegating tasks. A project management tool presents tasks in a visual format so team members can: 

• view assignments at a glance 
• assign and delegate tasks 
• track project status and progress
• collaborate via one platform 
  

Kanban boards are a visual project management solution that helps employees organize emails into tasks divided into columns and color-coded for maximum efficiency. Team members can physically see their tasks and move a project from “in progress” to “completed”. 

Gmelius offers Kanban boards for Gmail so that any email conversation can be transformed into a task and managed visually. 

Team members can delegate task cards to specific teammates, add sub-tasks, priority levels, and tags for clarity. With a Kanban board, a project manager will see that each task within the campaign is assigned and is on track or falling behind. This project management method prevents potential mistakes and delayed timelines, and helps streamline workflow.

Rather than enter a separate platform to discuss project matters, teams can assign emails directly from Gmail to their Kanban board. Teams can ask questions within a task card to eliminate reaching out on another platform. Managers can see what projects are pending and who is assigned what to have better visibility on important projects. 

5. Automate Workflow with Canned Responses

Automation can help projects stay on track by streamlining the gruntwork. For example,

• if utilizing a shared inbox, teams can set rules and adjust settings to automatically send or assign emails and tasks to appropriate team members.
• emails can be set to send to folders or Gmail labels, so project requests remain organized.
• reminders can be generated, so teams never lose track of when the next project meeting is.
• teams can automate Kanban Board workflows by automatically assigning specific tasks or emails to team members.

Additionally, managing promotional emails is crucial for maintaining a clean and organized inbox. Unsubscribing from unwanted promotional emails and using tools for mass unsubscribing can help eliminate excessive subscriptions that contribute to inbox clutter.

Email Collaboration Tool for Team Projects 

A stable project workflow can help your team members stay agile. Gmelius offers valuable project management solutions to bridge the gap between emails and projects to save time and maximize productivity.

Juggling multiple tasks is a necessity when managing projects. Gmelius simplifies this barrier by allowing teams to work from one platform within Gmail instead of shifting back and forth between applications. To manage emails effectively, it is crucial to establish rules and discipline. Efficient email management plays a critical role in business communication and compliance with legal standards.

Using specific folders to organize emails can further enhance productivity. By creating filters or rules, incoming messages can be automatically sorted into designated folders, helping users manage and prioritize their emails effectively.

Does your team use Slack or Trello to manage projects?  Gmelius offers unique two-way integration with popular project management tools such as Slack and Trello.

With Gmelius, teams can import Trello boards inside Gmail or turn a personal inbox, shared inbox, or a Gmail label into a Kanban board and sync it with Trello.

Reduce the time it takes to communicate by using Gmelius’ Slack integration tool. Teams can integrate shared inboxes and Gmail labels, collaborate on email conversations, add internal notes to email threads, change email statuses, assign emails, and even reply to emails—all without leaving Slack.

Team collaboration on projects remains at the top of the many challenges companies face using a remote or hybrid model. Let Gmelius simplify the process by including our top 5 email management tips in your strategy to streamline company projects and build better communication and collaboration efforts for your teams.

‍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!