Inbox management

Email is a brilliant communication tool and a terrible place to run your day. Keep Gmail open “just in case” and you hand strangers the power to reorder your priorities every five minutes. Marketers cannot afford that drift. The inbox should be a channel, not a command centre.

Treat it as you would ad spend: plan, measure, and limit its influence. When you shift from grazing your inbox to processing it with intent, you trade busyness for measurable growth impact.

Email feels urgent because each message arrives stamped with someone else’s date and time, yet urgency rarely equals importance. Allowing the inbox to dictate your priorities is like letting the postman design next quarter’s campaign calendar. Messages on top are simply the most recent, not the most valuable. Work from the inbox and you finish each day exhausted but oddly unaccomplished.

A real task list contains clear, self-contained actions. One email thread can hide five separate tasks—reply, pull data, chase design, seek approval, schedule launch. Leave that thread to fester and you will reread it tomorrow, doubling the time cost. Instead, move every actionable item into your task system immediately, then archive the email. Your brain trusts the system and switches from storage to problem-solving.

Give email its own container so it cannot flood the calendar. Two daily thirty-minute blocks—late morning and late afternoon—cover most marketing roles. Morning processing catches overnight mail after your deep-work block; afternoon clears the decks before close of play. If stakeholders need faster loops, shorten the blocks to twenty minutes each and add a quick midday sweep.

Guard these slots like client meetings. Add them as recurring events titled “Email processing”. When someone tries to book over one, you can negotiate. Fixed windows also justify turning off notifications: remove desktop pop-ups, phone banners, and unread badges. Each ping triggers a context switch that can cost twenty minutes of focus; silence saves hours.

Batching builds rhythm. You answer similar enquiries together, spot duplicate questions, and paste templated replies in seconds. Most marketers reclaim at least an hour a day when they stop grazing their inbox.

The two-minute rule

If a reply, forward, or delete takes under two minutes, do it immediately. Quick wins shrink the inbox and prevent tiny tasks from cluttering your main list.

Action label

Anything needing more than two minutes gets labelled “Action”. After clearing the inbox, transfer these items into your task manager and archive the mail.

Reference label

Contracts, brand assets, or event details go to “Reference” and archive straight away. They remain searchable without clogging decision space.

Someday label

Interesting but non-critical items land in “Someday”. Review monthly. If you never open the folder, delete it guilt-free.

Filters

Auto-label routine reports, tool alerts, and invoices so they bypass the primary view. Process them in bulk once a week instead of piecemeal.

Unsubscribes

Skip three editions of a newsletter? Unsubscribe. Five seconds now saves hours of delete-clicks this quarter—apply the same ruthless optimisation you bring to paid media.

Templates

Store canned replies for FAQs: access requests, asset links, campaign timelines. Three clicks and thirty seconds beat rewriting the same answer ten times a week.

Email should enable progress, not hijack it. Keep your inbox closed while you work, batch-process messages in two focused windows, and capture actions into a real task system. Silence the pings, filter the noise, and your inbox will reach zero daily. More importantly, your strategic marketing work will stay on track, and you will finish each week tired from achievement—not from chasing unread counts.