What is Email Task Management? Updated

As many as 42% of organizations do not recognize the importance of email task management. While email can be a fantastic tool for task organization, it may not be the most effective tool for tasks on its own.

Email task management via project management solutions, on the other hand, can save the average manager 153 hours per year.

Do you want a better way to manage tasks in your inbox? This article provides effective email task management solutions that allow your team to track, manage, and share email tasks directly from Gmail.

What Is Email Task Management?

Email task management entails sorting, organizing, and creating tasks in your inbox. This includes assigning tasks to others, setting deadlines, and managing projects via email.

Of course, emails are organized systematically by the sender, subject, and date, not by task, priority, and deadline. Emails are also clogged with conversations that have nothing to do with task delegation.

So, why use them at all?

Don’t get us wrong: email isn’t dead, especially considering that full-time employees can spend up to 2.5 hours per day working through their inboxes.

Those 30 minutes you lost don’t seem so bad now, do they? However, there is a way to turn emails into effective task management tools; all you need is email-based project management software. This entails using email task management. 

Features Your Email Task Management Tool Should Have

Here’s a list of essential features your email task management tool should have to help you out:

1. Email synchronization

Email integration is a must-have feature, especially since an email task management tool cannot exist without emails.

With email integration, your team can manage documents in and out of their inbox. They can also save and share emails and create tasks with automated notifications.

2. Task development and delegation

Task creation is an important feature that allows you to plan and send tasks to your project team via email. Tasks are assigned a due date, a task description, and attachments.

Effective task delegation will also assist you with capacity planning. This allows you to make the most of what is available.

After all, we all know Jack and Rose didn’t make the most of that floating door!

3. Task organization

It’s one thing to assign tasks; it’s quite another to manage a team. Your project management software should include team management features to ensure that each team member has daily tasks.

If a task is delayed, your task manager should be able to reschedule dependent tasks automatically. A calendar, time estimates, and task tracking tools should also be included.

4. Mentions of tasks

To tag members in your workspace, use the all-powerful @ symbol to mention a user, team, task, or document. Task mentions are always visible and can be sent via email.

This means that your team members will never forget a task, but they will forget the “I didn’t see the task” excuse!

5. Improved communication

The task manager you select should provide a centralized instant messaging platform through which team members can communicate. This way, your team can enjoy all of the benefits of email while no longer relying on it for (slow) communication.

Why You Need Email Task Management Tools

Email task management tools assist project managers and teams in increasing their workplace productivity. With a task manager app, your team can easily reach inbox zero and devote more time to individual tasks.

This is how task management software works:

1. Converts emails into to-do lists

You can turn your inbox into a giant to-do list by using a tool that integrates with your email client. So don’t bother downloading a separate note-taking or to-do app!

You can create tasks and add task details directly from your email with email task management. Say goodbye to task duplication and switching between apps and pages

2. To save time by sending fewer emails

Your team members, project-related documents, and conversations are all stored in one place with a task manager.

This eliminates the need to email a question to a team member only to receive a cryptic response that necessitates another email. Maintain this for a long enough period, and suddenly.

When you use a tasks app, however, your emails include every detail about the task as well as the due date. If someone has a question, they can simply ask it in the built-in chatroom.

3. Improves team efficiency

Email task management tools provide detailed task descriptions to project teams so that they are not confused about their responsibilities. Furthermore, you can simply mention a team member to share a task with them.

Project management apps also make it easier for teams to work together. Teams and project managers can better understand everyone’s project progress by utilizing task tracking features and instant messaging.

4. Makes your workflow more centralized

What’s worse than having to manage multiple tasks at the same time?

Managing a variety of tasks across multiple platforms! While we all like to think of ourselves as excellent multitaskers, the truth is that we are far better suited to working on centralized, unified platforms.

It keeps things orderly and organized, and it allows you to make sense of things with a quick glance. That is precisely what an email task management platform will assist you with.

You won’t be jumping from platform to platform trying to make sense of things because you can handle workload allocation, team communications, and task scheduling from the same interface!

How to Use Email Task Features?

One method for controlling your inbox and to-do list is to quickly convert emails that require action on your part into tasks. Both Outlook and Gmail have options for quickly and easily converting emails into calendared tasks. The benefit of this method is that all email information is automatically saved in your calendar.

Drag the email message into the To-Do tab in Outlook (formerly Tasks). The task can then be assigned a deadline.

Outlook also includes My Day, a daily calendar that is cleared at midnight each day. You can also add tasks to My Day by right-clicking an item and selecting Add to My Day, or by dragging a task there. All tasks are still in their hands.

Select the message in Gmail and click the checkmark icon (Add to Tasks). You can enter the task’s due date and time, and it will be added to your calendar. The day’s tasks are displayed in a panel on the right side of the screen.

The only exception is Apple Mail, which lacks a simple way to convert a message into a task. Some recommend Thunderbird for Mac as an alternative email app that integrates the inbox with a calendar.

To create tasks from your email application, you do not need to send an email message. You can also create and enter tasks manually. This can save time by avoiding the need to open the calendar app separately.

The Best Email Task Management Tools

1. Help Scout

Help Scout is email management software designed specifically to assist customer service teams in providing an exceptional customer experience.

It gives you access to powerful collaboration tools such as private notes to keep everyone informed and collision detection to eliminate duplicate work.

Workflows, for example, allow you to automatically assign customer conversations to specific agents or custom folders based on the criteria you specify. And saved responses make it a breeze to respond to routine requests.

Finally, having access to customer profiles allows you to stay informed. You can view previous conversations, the company the customer works for, the type of account they have, and other basic information to help interactions run smoothly and efficiently for both customers and agents.

Price: Starting at $20 per user/month.

2. SaneBox

SaneBox

Though much email task management software is geared toward business needs, tools are available to help manage personal inboxes. SaneBox is one of the best we’ve found. Their powerful AI learns your various email habits and then automatically sorts emails as soon as they arrive in your inbox.

High-priority messages are displayed immediately in your main inbox, while lower-priority messages are routed to a separate folder. They also provide features such as SaneNoReplies, which displays any messages you’ve sent that have yet to receive a response, and Do Not Disturb, which prevents any new incoming emails from appearing to help you focus on the task at hand.

Price: Starting at $7/month.

3. Sendinblue

Sendinblue

Sometimes you need to address a large group of people at once, such as when announcing a new feature or updating a company or product. You’ll need a specialized tool because you can only Bcc so many people from your Gmail account — around 500, if you’re curious.

Sendinblue is one of the best email task management tools. Their tool allows you to create beautiful emails with their simple editor and also includes top-tier automation to ensure messages are sent exactly when you want them.

You can also run A/B tests and track metrics like open rate and click-through rate, as well as see a heat map for your emails.

Price: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $25 per month.

4. Front

Front

To manage a group email address (for example, [email protected]), email management software is frequently used. Front, on the other hand, could be a great option if your team wants to interact with customers using both personal and shared email addresses.

Front has some collaborative features, such as internal comments, as well as more advanced features, such as analytics and automation, on their higher-cost plans.

Price: Starting at $19/person per month.

5. Hiver

Hiver

Many of the tools on this list are stand-alone products, but Hiver is not one of them. Essentially, it functions as an add-on to your existing Gmail account. With this email task management tool, you can assign emails to specific agents and add notes, which you can’t do with a standard Gmail account.

There are also task automation and analytics features, but many of the more advanced features are only available on their more expensive plans.

Price: Starting at $12 per user/month.

6. Moosend

Moonsend

Moosend is another one-to-many email task management tool. They provide features such as a no-code editor for quickly creating beautiful email templates. You can also segment audiences, A/B test, and track specific metrics.

Best of all, you can do all of the above with their free plan. There are some restrictions, such as that only one person can access the account. However, it provides a lot of value for free. They also have paid plans starting at $8 per month for those who want more functionality.

Price: Starting at $9 per month.

7. Emailigistics

Emailgistics

Emailigistics is similar to Hiver, but it’s an Outlook overlay instead of using Gmail. It offers similar functionality and light collaboration features such as notes and assignment capabilities.

You can also use automation to improve productivity and response times, such as routing emails to specific people based on certain conditions. To round things out, they provide access to analytics to see how your team is performing, though this is only available on their more expensive plan.

Price: Starting at $10/user per month.

FAQ

What is the function of an email management system?

Email management is the systematic control of the quality and quantity of electronic messages sent and received.

What exactly is task management?

The process of monitoring your project’s tasks from start to finish is known as task management. This entails actively making decisions for your tasks in order to accommodate changes that may occur in real-time, with the end goal of successfully completing your tasks.

What is an example of task management?

Project management with time tracking and invoicing capabilities, for example, are features that can supplement a task management system. We’ll walk you through four different task management systems or tools: Jira Software, Taimer, Trello, and Asana. Jira Software is a task management system that both teams and individuals can use.

How do I organize my email workflow?

A workflow’s goal should be to get an email to a place where you can act on it as soon as possible.
Organize your emails, take action (urgent & important), choose (important, not urgent), delegate (urgent, not important), and remove (not urgent, not important).

What are some best practices for email management?

Organize group emails in a shared inbox, emails should be sent at specific times, implement guidelines for writing concise emails, make a list of tasks, expectations, and deadlines, avoid unnecessary “reply-all”, Unsubscribe as soon as possible, Make use of folders, labels, and tags.

Conclusion

Teams can use email task management to use their inbox as their primary project management platform. While you could use your regular inbox, it does not provide you with a collaborative workspace with built-in chat rooms and task automation.

There are many people who will not leave their email applications to manage tasks. While this used to be a problem, new solutions such as Asana and Flow allow email and task management to be integrated within the task management solution.

References

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