The New York Times published an interesting article (requires free registration) on the avalanche of email workers must get through as they return from vacation. We’re biased, but we think that ClearContext Inbox Manager is an excellent tool for alleviating this problem.
A number of ClearContext users use the product to perform "triage" on their inbox when it gets too big to manage. Here are the three most popular ClearContext features people take advantage of to rapidly clear out messages:
- Inbox Manager AutoAssign rules file incoming newsletters, mailing lists, etc. into separate folders for future viewing. Create these rules and use the "Apply rule to existing Inbox messages now" checkbox to file messages that you have already received.
- ClearContext groups all emails in a conversation together in the inbox. This lets you quickly look at the most recent message in the thread and file/delete the entire set of messages.
- ClearContext’s core message prioritization functionality automatically identifies your most important email and places it right at the top of the inbox. This lets you quickly deal with all of your personal and important correspondence and then rapidly file all the remaining stuff like bulk email that has been moved to the bottom of your inbox.
Ed Bott went through a similar process when he first installed our software. Read his post on how he used ClearContext to clear out his 4500 message inbox in just one day.