For many of us, work means checking the email inbox constantly. Or, it could also consist of writing emails. Quite a few of us also find ourselves in charge of creating mass emails for subscribers using our company’s preferred email platform. The fact of the matter is that emails are an unavoidable part of today’s workplace whether you’re keeping in touch with clients and coworkers, advertising new products, building an audience list or retaining existing companies.

The most effective way to get your emails opened is probably no surprise. Let’s face it, we all want discounts and can’t resist when we see double digit numbers with percentage signs next to them. Once you get the “open” rate up, your branding and recent successes as a business do all the work. Make sure to mention recent achievements and accomplishments within the body of your email to give your business as much credibility as possible.

Another easy way to increase the effectiveness of your emails is something we all can do. When we write emails all day every day, we can forget to pay attention to the subject lines and vocabulary we are using. You can improve your subject lines easily by using action verbs.  If you receive a marketing email, or even personal email, and the subject line doesn’t grab you right away it’s easy to ignore the message altogether – there’s always hundreds of other emails in your inbox!

Sorting emails is a tedious task many of us can’t avoid. Luckily, there are a few advanced email settings in most inboxes that can do some of the work for us. Setting rules to filter emails from particular senders into different mailboxes is one good way to increase the efficiency of your mailbox and keep you focused on more important tasks. Adding flags and categories to emails can also help keep them sorted and keep your box from getting overwhelmed. Another seldom used trick in your email box is to right click on your calendar to open it in a separate window, rather than try to view your inbox and calendar at the same time.