Email is one of those great inventions that makes life easier and harder at the same time. Being able to send a message on the fly is great. But, it is just too easy to get swamped by too much email.

What can you do to handle all of the email coming at you on a daily basis? If you are using email for business, taking control of your email communication is even more important.

Lost, unopened, or unreasoned to emails can mean lost opportunities.

5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Email

You want your email to work for you, not against you. You want your email to work harder. Here are some tips to make emails do more work in less time:

1. Email Automation and Artificial Intelligence

Email automation is any sort of technology tool that helps deal with some of the repetitive aspects of handling emails. Many of the solutions below are types of email automation, but we feel this concept is important enough to warrant its own call out.

If the email software you are using is not giving you the automation features you need, consider looking at other solutions that can help make your life easier while improving business and sales.

Whether it is better filtering or artificial intelligence that helps you complete your thoughts while typing, email automation can speed up your online communication workflow.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is truly the next evolution of email. Auto completion of emails is just the beginning, as AI will eventually help respond to emails for us. This is going to bring up some interesting dilemmas, as Google recently faced in deciding to make its email AI more “gender neutral” to avoid offending people by presuming, for example, that a technology worker would likely be a male.

2. Calendar Scheduling

Everyone seems to have a packed schedule these days, which makes planning meetings a real nightmare. Email can make this worse when people are constantly “hemming and hawing” in lengthy back and forth discussions over dates and times.

Using advanced email tools, calendar scheduling becomes a lot easier in email. Email automation tools like Mixmax can help take your emails to the next level. Mixmax’s instant scheduling features connects to your Google calendar to pull your availability directly in Gmail automatically. The recipient can then choose a time that works for them with a single click.

The feature even prevents the dreaded double booking. If a client picks a time that has already been filled, the tool will instantly alert them that the time is no longer available so they can pick a time slot that is free.

One-click appointment setting can save hours of back and forth scheduling emails and help your organization look professional.

3. Email Reminders

Email reminders come in two basic forms: Reminders that you send out to your customers, clients, or coworkers to remind them of upcoming sales, events, or meetings – or reminders that get sent to yourself to remind you to get stuff done.

The latter type of “email reminder” may be as simple as a “snooze” button that will send an email to the top of the queue after a predefined period of time.

Whatever type of reminder you are using, just remember that many technologies exist to help you automate these tasks.

4. Creating Templates for Common Questions

If you are constantly sending out the same information over and over again to your email prospects, take this excellent advice and prepare a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) in advance. You can then turn the FAQs into email templates. Once a common question is asked, you can pull the correct template to send and save time from writing the same answer over and over.

5. Securing Your Emails

You may not realize this, but many email providers do not provide much in the way of security for your outbound emails. The original email protocol, SMTP, which stands for “Simple Mail Transfer Protocol” does not encrypt emails. In fact, all emails sent through SMTP, unless previously encrypted by special software, are sent out raw – and anyone with the right software that intercepts an SMTP email being sent can read it.

This also means that system administrators who may be running your website and email, such as those who work at the company that handles your web hosting, can read your emails. This means that standard email is not very private whatsoever! This is why you never want to send a credit card number through email.

Various forms of software and technology tools can be used to encrypt email or provide a secure message that only recipients can read. Encryption is an important part of Internet security and can help make your emails more private and preventing bigger headaches down the road.

You Can Be More Productive with Your Email

While sometimes called old-school, email is not going away any time soon. By making the most out of the technologies available, you can be more productive with your email. From AI support to encryption, email can be better managed and more secure.