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Conquer your Email Overload: Superb Tips and Tricks for Busy People
By Debbie Mayo-Smith
Published by Penguin Books
Paperback
264 pages

I became confused the further I got into Debbie Mayo-Smith’s book about making the most of your email packages. The more I read, the more sure I was that this was a manual on how to use Outlook and Outlook Express (The two email programmes that Debbie uses in her examples).

However, on the inside cover it distinctly says “What this book is not – A computer manual on how to operate Outlook or Outlook Express”.Putting my confusion aside, I started to get into the book, which does have some very good tips for making the most out of your email.

One thing to mention before we go any further; if you use any email programme other than Outlook or Outlook Express (i.e. Incredimail, Thunderbird, Pegasus and others) then this is not the book for you.

The book is broken up into four separate sections, Take Control of Your Inbox, Make Your Inbox Work for You, Make Your Inbox Work for Your Business and Get Much, Much More out of Outlook.

The first section is a gentle introduction into the things you can do to make your email a much more manageable thing. With an in depth look at Outlook’s Rules, Folders, Searching and Sorting, you can find good information to spend less time managing your incoming mail.

There is also a section on junk mail and, importantly, the different ways that filtering out junk can be done. In these days of spam, this is a real bonus.

Next, Debbie steps into a more in depth look at managing your Inbox. While starting off with some good information on the use of Tasks and Flags to keep track of the work you are doing, and then identifies a wide range of shortcuts you can use to increase your email productivity, she then moves into how Outlook can be used to improve your branding and marketing.

With the use of Signatures and in some cases Stationery (Debbie wisely counsels on the appropriateness of stationery in business) you can personalise your mail and keep your brand visible to all who receive your email.

This move into a more marketing focus paves the way for the third section where she covers the use of email in marketing. She discusses in depth the pluses and minuses of those nice looking graphical emails.

Newsletters are a key method of communication in our digital age and Debbie confesses to a database of more than 13000 subscribers. With this knowledge and experience, she goes into details around this topic, with mention of some do’s and don’ts of email newsletters.

Again due to her years of experience in this field, she has an interesting take on Junk Mail (Spam). Debbie gives you an inside look into the workings of email filters and anti-spam systems. By producing some simple tips on words and phrases to avoid, you can improve the ability of your message getting through to your intended recipient.