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Sarah Stadtherr
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598
10/01/20 at 3:16PM UTC
in
Management

Send a lot of emails? Try this trick

I work in a construction field and one of my responsibilities is to locate companies that are bidding on a project AND find the right person to send OUR quote for a certain project. Here’s what I’ve developed over the years. 1) I always use a “read receipt”. If the person never responds at least I can prove I contacted that person/company. 2) I use a standard email and have created a folder with about a dozen emails that I customize to the needs. This makes sure I say the right things and ask the right questions every time. 3) I use a good subject line – that I modify to each company (more later) such as “ 79 Bottles Brewery bidding 10-08”. The people I am emailing are extremely overloaded and very quick to read / not read an email. If my subject line has something they recognize they’ll be more likely to read and respond. The date tells them how fast they need to do something. 4) After making my template and storing it in the folder relating to that project I open it and enter the company name in front of the subject line just before I enter the emails I’m sending to. So, in the example above I’ll have “Smith Construction – 79 Bottles Brewery”. This tells them I’ve made a message just for them AND when the read receipt comes back, I can quickly notate that they got it. 5) I send the email to EVERY SINGLE address I have in my database for that Company. I don’t care if this person is in accounting or this person is the president of the Company. SOMEONE will respond. It also helps me to clean up the database. When responses come in I check the addresses and phone numbers and update as necessary. When an email bounces I don’t always delete it because there’s underlying “history” with that person/company. I will notate between their first and last names (Bounced 093020). Next time I hit that company I know not to use that email. If ALL of the email addresses for the company become outdated I change the Company name by adding a % at the front. This tells me I need to either check their website and obtain new data or call to get new people added to my database. I have 13k Companies in a database that’s been in operation for over 4 years so there is always updating that needs to be done! (I do this in my spare time – ha ha – when there isn’t a more pressing task at hand.) This process takes a little while to set up, but in the long run, saves a BUNCH of time for me and I can email a long list very quickly. Email me at [email protected] if you want additional help or an example of one of my templates.

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Katie Kristl
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137
Customer Support & Success Professional, Denver
10/03/20 at 6:16PM UTC
Some great tips for keeping track of your emails! I'd also recommend checking out Mixmax.com - there's a free version that tells you when someone opens your message, how many times they viewed it, if they downloaded an attachment (ex: a resume) - it works as an extension in your browser and it's really slick! There are paid versions that offer even more functionality if you need it. I use Mixmax when I'm corresponding during a job search.
Sarah Stadtherr
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598
10/03/20 at 11PM UTC
I've never heard of it but will look into it. Our company uses Hubspot which sounds similar.
Mrs. Kate Thoelke, M. Ed.Admin.
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87
Classical Lutheran Principal
10/03/20 at 12:56PM UTC
I am of the mind to reply to help your boss bcc the correct person. You may be privy to more information than you should be, and as a loyal employee a boss should be able to trust you with that information.
Michele Cresmen-Block
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102
10/02/20 at 8:49PM UTC
Depending on what you need to do with the emails, I love the integration of Outlook + OneNote. You can easily move emails you need to preserve for information into OneNote and organize them using OneNote's notebook/section/page/sub-page objects. If you're continually going to be emailing back & forth, OneNote IS NOT the solution for you. However, if you have to organize and store, I find OneNote is much better for retrieval.
Anonymous
10/03/20 at 12:03AM UTC
Michele, thank you. I never thought about using OneNote. I do continually email back and forth, however, some emails, I do need to hold on to for reference in a retrievable and safe place. OneNote might just fit the bill. Many thanks to you.....
Anonymous
10/02/20 at 12:50AM UTC
I'm on the opposite end, instead of sending a mass amount of emails, I receive a mass amount of emails. I have 4 email boxes that I am responsible for monitoring. It becomes a little overwhelming at times. This is the first position I've held that utilizes outlook as 99% of my job responsibilities. Does anyone have any suggestions on staying organized in Outlook? Also, does anyone have more than 1 email box to monitor? If so, how do you stay organized? Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!!!!
Sarah Stadtherr
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598
10/02/20 at 2:01AM UTC (Edited)
Learn to set up rules. Set them to act based on senders or topics and put the matching emails into certain categories you establish. Use your HELP function to understand the process. Email me if you need help. Address above. Also, lots of sub folders will help you be organized. I make a folder for each construction project we win. At one milestone in the project's life I move the whole folder into a different location. When the project is completed I move it again into DONE. I never get rid of anything because I've had to refer back after long periods of time. I recently split my done folder in half because it was getting hard to see all of it.
Anonymous
10/02/20 at 11:56PM UTC
Thank you Sarah for the suggestions on organizing my email. I got a testy email today from my manager in regards to replying to the wrong email and breaking the "chain?" I'm struggling w/using outlook as my primary job responsibilities. ALL my work comes at me via email and as I mentioned I have 4 boxes to monitor. I've set up folders/sub-folders/completed folders/I'm using categories in order to flag incoming orders that I don't have all the information needed to complete the job, etc, etc,..... I will email you, thank you for offering to help me get organized.
Janessa Schuellein
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157
A
10/03/20 at 5:09AM UTC
Anonymous, in Outlook, you can have your messages sorted by conversation. This will group any responses to an email in the same chain so you can see what the latest email is. Instructions below. This was really helpful in my last job where everyone used emails to communicate everything and emails were flying around wildly. Select the View tab of the Ribbon, and in the Messages group, check the Show as Conversations check box. In the dialog box, select an option to display conversations in all folders or the selected folder only. Messages are now sorted by conversation.
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Catherine Mohan
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176
Internal Tools & Integrations Developer
10/01/20 at 5:10PM UTC
I'm curious about why you use read receipts. You don't need one to prove you sent an email as long as you don't clear out your Sent folder. Some people at my company do use them but Outlook asks me if I want to send one or not and I typically opt not to. As for the other steps, I had a similar routine when I was working on lots of IT support tickets. I don't have a database of emails, but I did use email and subject templates heavily. I didn't have the templates saved in my email but I had a text expander/text shortcut program that I used. I would type in a key word or phrase and it would replace it with the standard template I had written. I still use it but not quite as heavily as I used to. My new role doesn't involve as many tickets.
Sarah Stadtherr
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598
10/01/20 at 5:17PM UTC
Read receipts can be used effectively when someone says "I never got your email." Um, yes you did and you read it at 11:01 three days ago. :) My email settings are DEFAULTED to read receipt and the only time I turn it off is for personal emails or strictly internal company emails. Sometimes, I leave it on for internals as a CYA too. :)
rock star
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14
Self employed owner of A1 spotless cleaning and
10/02/20 at 12:44PM UTC
cya?
Sarah Stadtherr
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598
10/02/20 at 12:58PM UTC (Edited)
Cover Your Ass.
Ann Schmidt
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15
10/01/20 at 5:21PM UTC
Whenever I get an email from an external person, and the read receipt pops up it asks me if I want to except it or not. I usually do not except it because a lot of times it’s a cold call/email and I don’t want them to know that I’m reading the email.
Sarah Stadtherr
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598
10/01/20 at 5:24PM UTC
That's certainly your choice but I'll still use it as I've found it helpful to me. Many times the email servers automatically send the reply and the reader doesn't even know there was a read receipt. PS - the word you want is ACCEPT (except is almost the opposite of accept) the email receipt.
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