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<aside> 💡 A client’s email inbox can act as the hub for their entire personal and professional life. However, going through every message can be a huge time sink. As an XP, you can develop processes that will enable you and your client to go through their inbox swiftly without missing important messages.
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Order confirmations, task updates, and newsletter subscriptions can clutter your client’s inbox. Unless you create a process that allows your client to navigate quickly through their inbox without overlooking urgent messages, inbox messages can quickly get out of hand.
Labeling emails helps tame your client’s inbox and allows you to deal with messages as soon as they come in. The goal is not necessarily Inbox Zero, but to save your client’s mental bandwidth.
Your client may have a lot of resources at their disposal, but one resource will always remain scarce—time. To protect your client’s headspace and time, you must ensure that every email is properly categorized. One way of doing so is by adding tags or labels that instantly filter messages from different sources.
In some email applications, labels can live in more than one place. That makes them more efficient than folders, which can bury messages deep within nested folders. With labels, you can file emails under different categories. Think of labels as Post-It notes that you can stick as many as reasonably possible on a particular message. This makes collaboration with your client easier since both of you would know which messages to prioritize and defer.