Inbox Zero & Marketing Power Tools
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Inbox Zero & Marketing Power Tools: We are live and it's that time of the week for Geeks Week. And today we are talking about Inbox Zero and email management. Yeah, I think landing on best practices because it's the apps we quicker realize where it's not. It's more just like things to watch out for in apps and how to pick them.
I'm not sure that we're supposed to give. The hook at the beginning on a live. I think that's just for Tik Tok Phelan. Oh yeah. You got to lead them up front to let them know they're like, I'm not. Yeah. We're, just giving them a little bit of a heads up of what's what to be expected. And of course my name is Phelan at Seymour Digital Media.
And I'm Rena from little works in the media. And we are here to talk about inbox zero, because it's actually the thing that has shifted my business the most in 2024. And I really wanted to get some of these things out to everyone, because once you can stop, stop getting overwhelmed by the number of inquiries and, things that get into your inbox and constantly checking your notifications and all of that, the more you have.
Time to act in your calendar and your day to block time blocks for that. You can actually address the things that are going to move your business forward the most, right? So it's not your it's not responding to every single email. That's going to do that right away. No. And Phelan and I had actually a pretty good chat and I'm going to be changing a couple of my things in the near future.
And that, can I just segue into that? Yeah, for sure. Let's go. So there are lots of apps on the market that you can use to do things like, put all of your certain Certain emails into a tag, like a label or a folder, depending on what kind of, platform you're using. So we use, we both use Google workspace.
So in our case, it would be a label that we would be using. I sometimes call them. So if I call it folder during this time, please forgive me. Labels, and then I'm not really sure how Microsoft works, but most, all I haven't come across any email providers that don't provide you with a way of organizing your emails, either in folders or by labels.
But the key thing is, that we don't want to actually be reading the email and then moving it over to that folder or adding the right label onto it. That takes actually a lot of time. The apps that do that for you, external apps, third party apps, They come with privacy issues and security issues.
So one thing that you have to remember is that if you're like me and you're actually having to account for the security that you put on your systems to your insurance provider, You want to make sure that you're not using these third party apps at all. And then it's questionable if you want to risk it.
If you don't have insurance, I'm not sure what happens. I think it might even be worse, quite frankly. But when you hook up these third party apps to your inbox, they had, they do have the ability to access your inbox. You do sign up with your password to your email in order to. Let them do their thing.
And you want to make sure that you're actually not doing that because they have access. There can be data breaches. They can sell your data. If you haven't really looked that closely at their terms of services. And then, of course, they have to be actually following their terms of services in order for you to be rest assured.
So, we've, I'm going to be adjusting what I do slightly, but but what we want to do, what I was talking about is we don't want to go into our inbox and create our own. manual way of moving things over. We don't want to use third party apps. So what do we want to do? That's the question. I'm like yeah, And so I think that's, that was one that we both were in agreement of is that you'd be very cautious about your inbox getting in the hands of someone else Because they might not even mean to, but they might accidentally have left like a zero day backdoor way in and then all of a sudden all of your emails get scanned and I don't know about you, but like I have a lot of clients that are not the most technically savvy and they'll do stupid things like email me their details, passwords, stuff like that.
And you're just like, Yeah. And so it's definitely one I try to minimize as much as I can. But it's definitely one that you can never be too cautious with it. So I think that we both were in agreement that use as many of the inbuilt tools, because there's a lot that Google does offer, that are just right in, Gmail as well.
Yeah. Yeah. So sign up, you can use like their third party apps. You failing, you were saying that there's one that helps you find things to unsubscribe. So first step is to go through and figure out all of the all of those nasty newsletters that you somehow got signed up onto. You don't really remember why.
And first unsubscribe to all of that. Immediately, like just every and what I usually do to start off, because if you ha if you're like me, I think I had over 10, 000 unread emails in my inbox and then a whole bunch of other emails in my inbox. So what I did was the first step is to take all of those.
Everything that's left in your inbox, you create a folder, a label. I called it mess. You can call it whatever you like. You can, it doesn't really matter. And you're just going to shove everything into there for now. And and then we're going to set up from zero because it's just much easier to organize your inbox once you're at zero.
So it doesn't mean that you, still have all those emails. You can still go look for them. And as you go look for things, you can, delete and subscribe and all that stuff from your mess pile as you do it. So for example, when I did a search the other day for one of my contractors, I found three of their emails still sitting in my mess pile.
Label so I just was able to I knew that work had been organized and completed so I just unlabeled those three and now they're in the proper archives section. In the archived email and not in my inbox anymore and not in the mess So that's number one get everything out of your inbox immediately Then the second thing you're going to do is you're going to block time off in your schedule for batch communications So I started with an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon of each day And I scheduled that in so that I was not disturbed by anyone else, no clients couldn't book that time, anything like that.
And then I was able to get that to shorter spans of time. So now I'm down to a half an hour in the morning and a half an hour in the afternoon. So that's number one, number two. And then number three is your approach. How do you approach that batch communications and you turn, you need to turn off all your notifications.
Otherwise, you'll just get distracted. And then number three, I put on a do not disturb onto my, my inbox. So I can't actually look in my inbox, during the times that's not designated to batch communications. And then after that, so you sit down to your morning and your afternoon, and I'll ask you, Phelan, how you approach your session.
Email during the day. I think yours is, might be a little bit different than mine, but I sit down in the morning and, then I usually have now I'm down to about 10 at the beginning when I was doing an hour, it was more definitely more because I hadn't unsubscribed. So I did a couple of things, the newsletters that I absolutely have no idea how I got on that list, or it's so outdated that I'm not interested anymore.
I unsubscribed from all of those things. Then any of the emails that I want to keep tabs on, but I don't necessarily want to read them all the time. I go up and I try and reduce the frequency that I receive them. So if they email daily, I try and get on a weekly or a monthly email instead. And then I also make a filter so that email address goes directly into a tag space, for that I call weekend reads.
So every Saturday I thumbed through it, figure out what I'm interested in with my coffee and I sit down and I read those things or I take a peek to see if there's anything interesting and then I delete everything in that after once I'm finished. And if I didn't get a chance to look at at Seymour digital marketing.
newsletter, which would never happen. I would just delete it and wait for the next one because I feel like there's nothing that's going to be that important in newsletters that I wouldn't have noticed in the subject line. In my weekly clear out. And then you start doing, so that's getting your two worst, Offenders the newsletters and the that you definitely don't want the newsletters.
You want I keep some like my clients so that I can see what they're doing. I keep my my colleagues especially with my BNI people. So I can keep on track and be reminded of what kind of referrals I can be helping them with. by knowing when they have sales and when they have specials and new items and all of that stuff.
So I don't really want to be disconnected from that, but it's just a coffee time on Saturday morning now. And then after that, you just keep doing that. So you keep making labels. So that's my weekend reads. Then you might have something else. So for example, all of the newsletters that I stay, that I, want to look for, geek speak content.
I have a label called geek speak and then I I just let everything create filters so that they bypass the inbox. When you create a filter, you don't want to just put the tag on it cause it'll still end up in your inbox. You definitely want to say never goes into my inbox. And it's going to go straight to your tag.
And then when I'm ready to do my prep research for GeekSpeak on Tuesdays, I sit down and I thumb through those. And then at the end of the month, we delete, all of those. And that's, and then I'm left mostly with just really important emails in my inbox. And that's what sort of keeps me on zero zero inbox zero without using the external email management apps.
Do you have a different process that you use? You hit on a lot of what we do. It's a lot of labels, and things get filed respond to email, then file it with like there. So we have cause you can also do sub files. Labels. So you get a label and then, so ours is like clients, active clients, and then they all, of our clients are listed under that.
And so we would just file it if they sent us an email. And so that way it's not lingering in the inbox. We've also, I've done the automatic filtering. I found it to be dangerous because I forget about it sometimes. And then like once or twice, I only use automatic filtering for things that are not important.
That is for sure. Newsletters. Do you have, do you know of an in app? So not the external, not the third party app, a Google product that, that locks you out of your inbox?
Locks you out of your inbox. I like, I'm still using a third party app, which I'm going to delete probably at the end of today, because obviously I need to get my security up. So it just prevents me from seeing my inbox. And when I want to absolutely, I have to hit, and then it takes 20 seconds for it to show me the inbox.
So it actually helps reduce that impulse to go in and check to see if anything's there. Yeah oh, so one thing also just to mention, cause it gets weird when we're talking about this stuff. So there's, Third party apps that are like an app, like a website all by itself, like superhuman is an inbox zero app that connects to your Google workspace, and it just routes the emails over to their, client that's slightly different than if you get something from a chrome extension.
So Chrome extension is super restricted on what it's allowed to do. Because of course it's a Google, it's Google organized. Okay. So the extensions, I like that. Cause I do use Boomerang and I believe that's a Google extension. Chrome extension. It's a Chrome extension and there are some huge restrictions because what happened is one of the Chrome extensions called the great suspender was, which would pause tabs that you weren't using was aggregated that data and then and so once Google found out they were they were quite displeased with them.
Yeah. So if you've ever tried to build your own Chrome extension, you'll notice that it's it's very, they call it sandbox. So basically you're limited on the functions you could do because they, it's an obvious security risk if you just let it go wild on someone's Chrome. So I've been in sandbox when ready.
I need to figure out if that is. It's a third party or an inbox when ready. What I like about it is that it actually clocks how much time I go into my inbox. So it says that I've seen my for today it says you've seen your inbox twice and it was visible for 14 minutes. So now you can see how much time I'm not spending in my inbox.
It's already 1114. Do you know what I mean? So I feel. Cool. Proud of that. Now, once you get to zero and you use these steps, it's actually really easy not to spend two hours doing email a day. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think that yeah, having it more structured, I think it's definitely a good idea. I'm definitely guilty of not being super structured with it.
And it's by my own admission that I'm aware of that part of it. And then the other thing about that inbox locker that I'm using is that if somebody puts urgent in this, in the subject line, it actually blows through. So I, it's not and I also have a system where I, and this I'm, organizing this for business owners.
Because it's a bit different for a freelancer and your job is the technical side of, stuff. Because if there's a tech problem, you certainly don't want to be visiting your inbox only twice a day in case anything's gone down. As, we both know, when a website goes down, you need to be on it. But in my case, I've let all of my clients know that if their website goes down or their email goes down there to text me for help.
Or, contact Deanne. And if we don't get in touch within a few minutes then, they text us. And so that's what gets us involved with on it so that we can stay on it and, still, and stay focused. Yeah. Which makes sense of a way to structure it, where there's going to be situations where it's no, I do need to get ahold of you right away.
Most times, in most cases, most clients don't need to. It's but in the off chance that there is something like websites down or anything like that. Not receiving emails, anything that's like major like that, obviously you want them to be able to get through to you. And so having those kind of filters, exceptions to your filters is also going to be good for you as well.
I, think, I feel, that there's, Oh, one other thing that it's interesting, just as a quick aside that I didn't know until Hey got released two years ago. Hey was built by the guys who did, it's D A H, it's going to bug me. The project management it's like one of the oldest project management tools, but, but Hey, it's the only email client service that's not run by Microsoft or Google.
Nearly all emails the actual like server that runs how you get emails are all run by Google or Facebook and then people put a veneer over it like a the endpoint is different But the actual server that's routing it. It's all either google or Microsoft and so that also means that they have more Information of what's coming in and they get to pick what counts as spam and what doesn't count as spam and so the guys now it's base camp The guys at Basecamp have built their own email server.
Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I just found something important for me. Speaking of interruptions. Sorry. Continue. Yeah, I was just saying that they built one it feels two years ago. It's yeah. In the middle of COVID kind of time and they released it and it's like a complete privacy and you pay for it annually all at once like it's 300 bucks for the year and but it's like entirely private and you don't have so it's just interesting to the levels of how the email kind of works for, so the inbox ready, which is what I've been working with inbox when ready, I should call it it is a Chrome extension.
It's also available on Firefox and edge for people who are not using Chrome. I find it in Stanford university uses it as their website says. I'm, I can't verify that. But it doesn't have, funnily enough, it doesn't have a terms of service page on their website. No, because the terms of service aren't adjudicated by the app, they're adjudicated by the Chrome web store.
So I don't have to worry about reading it myself? What it is, that it's Oh, okay, it's terms of privacy. I see it now. I see it now. Sorry. It's just in a weird spot. That was weird. They should put it in the my guess is that they do have to submit something on how they would handle any data so that Google knows what you're doing and when, and it's probably gonna be it has to be compliant with the web store.
Yeah, this one really does talk about security on their terms of service, so I feel not too bad about this, and be and because it's a Chrome extension, I feel pretty good about this, too. But if you have a liability disclaimer, but as long as you're, I think the point is, that when you're using insurance when you have to prove things to your insurance provider, or you, have a problem with data loss, It's the it's, like the castle compliance.
You have to prove that you have systems in place where you've actually thought about it, you're you've thought about these things and you've looked for solutions that have these things. And it's it says it's as tight as you can. Make it, without thinking, Oh, I didn't even know that.
Do you know what I mean? Like you, as long as you have a system in place and you're training your people on that system, that's usually a very good defense in, that kind of litigation. Yeah, exactly. And yeah. And just being aware of where you might have vulnerabilities in your system and how people can take advantage of those ones.
I think it's just being aware of it as well. Cause it goes back to something like the Grammarly Chrome extension is, one, cause it technically still follows all the compliance rules when it scans information and then processes it on their server. That's technically allowed. The issue is like, are they actually storing it?
That that's always the biggest issue is it's on your server. What, what, happens after that? And so that's where I don't know about the they can be compliant up to an extent, but that's opening up to a vulnerability. Yeah, for sure. For sure. And then there are always those things that people can't foresee.
Yeah. Yeah. And it might even be malicious actor on their part that might just be a screw up and, but it's the same, it's a distinction without a difference at that point, because you still have data loss or a breach of some kind. And just because people are, good actors, it doesn't mean that it, they're, that they're not screwing it up in some other way that end results the same.
Yeah, so it's and it's again, it's about layers of protection. So I'm using a COVID metaphor layers of protection. So while you use, Google apps and, they're, they have had data breaches before anyways, And you're you're careful about what you're installing and you understand what you're doing.
There's also things like make sure your clients are not sending you passwords in email at all. Like using encrypted ways of sending that information is way more important is super important. And that'll help. So if you do have a data breach, you don't have that kind of sensitive information, credit card numbers sent by email those types of things.
You don't have those sitting in your email waiting to be found. And then making sure that if they ask you, if your client accidentally does do that, because they haven't read your email that shows them how to use quick, forget, or one of those encryption tools that you delete that email right away, you don't store that email and you move your information up, or you ask the.
Client to we're off your site now, please change your password or we've created our own username, please. And that's the other thing. You want to be sharing access to your website by creating a new username, not by sending your information to your developer, or at least having them set up their own username, and, having their own access and then changing the client password.
Yeah. And that's, yeah, good hygiene that way. Also, it's easier to, if something does go wrong, having like their own specific login and then you can see Yeah, you can track, yeah, you can track everything way better. So it's much easier, especially I don't, I will not use client emails because we did have this one client who did mess up her site and insisted that we messed up the site.
And thankfully we had set up two, two users. So we were able to actually demonstrate that was not the case. And that was really helpful. Because you don't you, want to make sure it's not about pointing blame. It's about figuring out what needs to be different next time so that those things don't happen.
Yeah. Yeah. And same thing for us as well. For Google ads, they have a version history. And so it tracks Oh, this user did this on this day. So you could see Oh, the account crashed. You can contact Facebook too, and they will give you information on who did what. Really? I used to know how to do it for Shopify.
There's a special page that you can go to on your Shopify store and it will say user on this date did this, like it's like a log, it's an activity monitor, it wasn't obvious. And I only found it because like I basically hacked the system. It's not supposed to be revealed. But there's some way to do it.
I it's just coming back to me as we're talking about all this Yeah, I'd say, I think, yeah, just a synopsis of what we were talking about today. It's like good hygiene on your security is going to be important, especially like you don't want to make yourself a soft target for getting exposed.
No matter what it is just generally taking that hygiene, especially if you're a business owner, because you probably have sensitive information for other people and that's why people are going to be trying to hack into your stuff, Oh! And the last thing about email security, which I it's not really the last thing, but it's another thing that's move away from server email.
If you're still on cPanel server email, you don't have a dedicated server for your email, then you need to move away from that because that is the easiest way to ruin websites. And the, security is the worst on server email. That's good to know. Yeah. It's generally go for someone, some big company.
That's boring. That's doing this stuff like Microsoft and Google are, they're fairly boring, but like that's boring and safe. And for the most part, most business owners, the safety is, would be better than buying whatever Fancy tool, whatever way you're, whatever your reasoning is for not getting that.
I think it's just way more valuable for you to just stick for something that's known and everyone needs us. Yeah. And if you have to be HIPAA compliant, then you want to talk to either Phelan and I privately because we have different answers for people who are in, in, in that situation. Yeah.
Yeah. There, there's definitely distinctions there. And even, Pipita that's the Canadian version of HIPAA, and that's got its own compliance and yeah you, definitely want to be talking to people before you go and make any decisions on how to Be compliant with all those. And I think that's, oh, we still have four minutes.
So do we have any questions? Are there any questions? I see, a few people anyways. Did you have any last minute things that you wanted to add to to your, how you organize your day? Or do you, are you just in the inbox whenever, or do you, schedule it? How do you handle it? I'm closer to the technician side.
Than it is. Yeah. So, I'm like, I wish that I could be blocked off like that, but that's just not gonna be realistic to like, for my sake I've got, just stuff that comes in that I need to get into our system. And as much as I wish that I could Oh, I'm just going to answer emails.
What day, whenever night, it's just, that's not going to be for workflow with the clients, like that's where I got my project manager. I was very much like you and it was driving me mental. So it's really good. Now I can focus on what I should be focusing on instead. Yeah. Generally one, the other thing, sorry, while I have this and it's, this is going to sound weird, but right clicking on emails is definitely in Gmail is worth it.
Because Google is constantly adding things to the right click panel. Oh, I did not know that. Now I'm going to, I'm going to hit that show inbox button on my, when, ready and I'm going to. You froze up real quick on that one.
Okay. So I'm going to right click control. No, that's not right. Command is command on the Mac, on the Apple. I forget what right click is cause I never use it. I have a Mac mouse, so I don't. I cannot tell you. Did I lose you? Yeah. Yeah. The are you back? Can you hear me?
Hello? Okay. I don't know if we're going to get Reena back for the last minute. But I will say it's been a fun conversation. Watch out with using Gmail cause it is a bit of a ram hog and it will, yeah, slow your computer down. So just keep that. And but that is to say, my name is Phelan and that is Rena. She is frozen right now so she can't hear us. But we are with GeeksBeak with Cyberpunk Geeks Marketing Mixer. And we will see you next week when we are talking about I totally have this. Totally not doing this last second. Oh, okay. I'll have to check the channel. But anyway, bye
