????????????

I write a lot of emails. I also get a fair amount and process through gobs of different types of messages. I've emailed people who reply right away and those who never reply and, when pressed in person or on the phone, often claim not to have received the email. Of course most people are somewhere in-between.

There are a lot of blogs on how to best manage your email, I'm not going to re-write those. The way I use my email is pretty simple. I subscribe to a modified "inbox zero" approach. That is to say that everything that comes into my inbox needs to get out of my inbox as soon as possible and into the "archived" folder.

Email comes in, and if its something I can answer in less than five minutes I reply with the answer, then archive the original email. If its something that I can't do immediately, I block out time on my calendar for the work, then reply back setting the expectation that I will work on this more on Tuesday and you'll hear back after that. If its something bigger that can't just be calendared it goes on a todo list that is reviewed once or twice a week.

I do my best not to respond to work emails outside of working hours, nor personal emails during working hours.

Makes sure they got it: whenever I send an important email I will immediately call or text "just to make sure you got my email". Sometimes you're able to make the sale or resolve the issue on that call while they're looking at your email.

Always be friendly: I like to say something nice, say what I'm going to say, then say something else nice. It doesn't cost anything to be nice and the results are phenomenal.

Further reading:

https://clean.email/archive-emails/how-to-archive-in-outlook