Email rules are part of every email client and can be one of the top time savers when it comes to email organization.

Basically what a rule does is when an email is received into your Inbox certain actions are taken based on rules that you’ve defined.

For example, you can set up a rule that will direct any emails that come from Client #1 directly into the Client #1 folder.  With Outlook and Entourage you can even assign these emails to a Category and therefore a colour.  Colour coded emails – how fun!  And how easy to spot at a glance.

Think about how this can help to save you time, not only by taking the sorting out of your hands, but by helping you prioritize your work.

Let’s say that you’ve already created your folders and subfolders, and now you’ve set up your rules: one for each client, another for your team, and another for your newsletters.

Whenever new emails are received you can see at a glance exactly how many emails you have received from each client, from your team, and how many newsletters you’ve got.

If you’ve been waiting for an email from Client #1, you can spot it as soon as it arrives and go straight to it.  You can ignore everything in the Newsletter folder until you have some free time to read up.  If Client #3 has higher priority than Client #2, you can keep an eye on their folder and attend to their emails as soon as they arrive.

With rules there is no more manual sorting and therefore no buildup of emails in your main Inbox – everything gets automatically sorted to where it is supposed to go.  Super efficient!