My personal email is a disaster. I’ve had the same email account for nearly 12 years, and it’s a disrespectful disaster to all things email. I have THOUSANDS of unread emails, my inbox is not full only because it has an unlimited capacity, and serves as an example of what NOT to do with your professional email.
My work emails however, is a different beast altogether. While it’s not at inbox zero (yet), it’s still a way better representation of good email management.
Why Should You Care About eMail Management?
There’s a good chance your servers have physical hard drives storing your data. The more data is stored and traveling through your email servers, the slower your network may operate.
How
How is your e-mail box doing lately? Ever received an “Undeliverable” notice that your mailbox (or a colleague’s mailbox) is full? When mailbox size fills up quickly, large email attachments are often to blame.
In addition to deleting old emails and calendar events, and archiving the things we need to keep, smart habits for sending email can go a long way toward maintaining mailbox size. Here are some best practices for email attachments that will help you, and your coworkers, to tame the mailbox.
Keep emails small:
* Avoid unnecessary graphics; each image can be several megabytes (MB) in size.
* Avoid attachments; put text in the body of the email whenever possible.
If you have attachments:
*For a large file (greater than 2MB), consider posting the file to an appropriate cloud-based sharepoint and send the link in the email.
* If you are sending daily messages, emailing a link to the file posted on your cloud-based or sharepoint can trim the email fat from yours and your recipients.
If you are sending email to a large group:
* Again, instead of emailing a large attachment, send a link to the file instead. Services such as Google Drive, OneCloud and DropBox offer great solutions for both personal and professional records.
Consider this: a single 5MB file sent to 11,000 recipients is roughly 55GB of data traffic through your network’s mailbox infrastructure.
Are you sending meeting invites? Refrain from sending large attachments in a recurring meeting invites and include a link to the folder instead. Getting the gist?
A meeting invite attachment will be included in EVERY meeting instance and takes from an individual’s mailbox size limit. Instead, a link within the invite pointing to the file on your cloud based (or repository folder) will help prevent unnecessary mailbox growth.
These best practices help keep your mailbox (as well as co-worker mailboxes) from filling up.
Happy (and smart!) emailing!