Create a 5-Step Email Triage Workflow With Clean Email

What is Email Triage?

Email triage is an inbox process where you handle and address each incoming message based on priority and/or importance. The intent is to ensure timely actions and responses as well as enhance organization and improve focus.

For instance, a message from your boss asking the status of an overdue task would be a high priority and require immediate attention. However, a message with a summary from your morning meeting would be a low priority requiring no action.

The basic process is similar in ways to the inbox zero method and involves the following:

Unfortunately, not all email applications provide the tools and features you need for a successful triage workflow. But there is one inbox management app that gives you what you need and then some. That application is Clean Email.

Set Up an Email Triage Workflow With Clean Email

Because an effective email triage system is most successful with a combination of automatic and manual processes, you can count on Clean Email to provide exactly what you need.

📌 Clean Email is a mailbox management tool that works with IMAP service providers like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, and others. And it’s available on the web, desktop (on Mac), and mobile devices (both Android and iOS) for message handling and inbox organization wherever you use it.

With the five-step guide to email triage below and the robust features of Clean Email, you can set up a successful, efficient, and effective workflow.

1. Create Automated Inbox Rules

One of the best ways to start setting up an email triage system is with automations to handle messages for you. Clean Email offers a couple of features that can mark, move, or pin specific messages based on conditions. So, you can do things like automatically mark important emails from your boss or move particular messages to a project folder.

Auto Clean

🎯 Create your inbox rules using the Auto Clean feature.

You can select conditions such as sender, size, or keyword and even combine multiple criteria. Then, pick the action like star, flag, archive, move to folder, delete, or send to Read Later (read more below).

When a message arrives that matches the conditions, the action you choose kicks in. This gives you an easy automatic email triage for messages you want to act on quickly or defer until later.

Pins

🎯 Another automation is the ability to pin messages.

With this feature, you can pin messages to or from specific people, those with a certain label, or recent emails to ensure that these messages are never matched by any rule and no action is applied to them. Additionally, you can create groups to automatically pin emails from coworkers, friends, or family.

Once you set up the pins you want to use, you can view those messages in the premade Pinned folder. This provides a simple way to quickly spot urgent emails you need to act on immediately.

2. Manually Mark Incoming Messages

Along with emails you receive from frequent senders are those that trickle in from other sources. For these, you can use Clean Email’s features for manually labelling, marking, or moving.

Mark, Star, or Label

🎯 No matter which email service you connect to Clean Email, you can mark as read or unread, star, or label messages using its automation tools.

For example, you can create and apply a label to a message to categorize it.

Or you can automatically add star to urgent messages, or even star all new messages from an important sender.

This allows you to use the email triage tool that suits you best, regardless of the email service you use.

Read Later

🎯 Above we mentioned the Read Later feature. This is the best email triage feature for messages you want to defer until later. But you can also use Read Later for trivial emails you receive like newsletters you want to review when you have time.

Simply choose Read Later in the email’s menu or choose Deliver to “Read Later” in settings.

As a bonus, you can use an automation for sending emails to Read Later whenever you receive them. For instance, you can deliver messages from specific senders or domains directly to Read Later when they arrive.

Then go to the Notifications menu and choose how often you want to receive the Read Later Summary. You can also choose to turn off this summary and review the Read Later folder only when you find it relevant.

Not only does this reduce inbox clutter, but gives you an easy way to get back to those messages you defer.

3. Use Premade Folder Filters

Setting up automations and manually marking messages is a good email triage practice, but what if you could have related messages always appear in a certain spot for you without lifting a finger?

Smart Folders

🎯 Smart Folders are folders automatically created for you based on pre-defined filters.

These give you a terrific way to see those messages you want to read but aren’t expected to act on. As examples, you have folders containing emails where You Are CC-ed, that are Not From You and Not to You, and also Automated Messages.

By having these types of messages automatically filtered into folders, you can check them when you have time, knowing upfront that no action is required.

Along with the aforementioned folders are more to help you check other types of related emails. For instance, you’ll see folders for Social Notifications, Seasonal Sales, Online Shopping, Ride Sharing, Food Delivery, and many others.

You can then select multiple or all messages within a folder and apply bulk actions to them.

Note that Smart Folders don’t move messages, they simply filter them for an effortless way to organize your emails.

4. Remove Unwanted Emails

Part of an email triage system is removing those messages you don’t need. This can mean archiving or deleting messages but also completely stopping emails that you no longer want to receive. Clean Email gives you two features that help you do both.

Keep Newest

🎯 When you receive a number of emails on the same subject, it’s often just the latest one you need. Using the Keep Newest feature, you can retain the most recent message in a group and send the remaining messages to the Trash.

For example, maybe you receive a daily digest or summary from a task management application. Once you check the activities for the day, that email becomes outdated. By choosing Keep Newest for that group of emails, you can hold onto the latest message and clear your inbox of the outdated emails.

Unsubscriber

🎯 If it’s newsletters, marketing messages, or promotional emails that you want to completely stop, check out Unsubscriber. With it, you can remove yourself from multiple mailing lists at once. This is a huge improvement over email services like Gmail where you can only unsubscribe from one message at a time.

Using Unsubscriber, you can also pause subscriptions for a short time if you’re doing a quick inbox cleaning or even resubscribe to a mailing list if you change your mind later.

5. Keep Your Inbox Clean

An email triage workflow is most effective when you have a clean inbox. To accompany the features above for removing messages, Clean Email gives you additional features for maintaining a tidy inbox and making email triage a quicker process.

Screener

🎯 When you receive emails from unknown senders, Clean Email collects these in one spot for you to review. Screener lets you to Allow or Block emails from new senders before they reach your inbox. For those detected from a mailing list, you may also see a handy Unsubscribe option.

This is a fantastic way to reduce inbox clutter upfront. You can confirm messages from new senders, stop messages from unknown or spammy senders, or even choose to allow or block all of them at once.

Cleaning Suggestions

🎯 Sometimes you don’t have moments to spare for a good inbox cleanup. This is where Cleaning Suggestions can save you time. This section of your mailbox automatically groups messages and recommends actions for you.

For instance, if you normally archive messages from a particular sender or domain, you’ll see the emails grouped for you with the suggested action to Archive them.

These recommendations are based on previous actions you’ve taken along with common actions performed by other users, and can significantly speed up the cleaning process.

Wrap-Up

The best email triage system and accompanying tool is the one that works best for you. Just remember that you don’t need expensive email triage software for an efficient workflow.

With Clean Email’s advanced feature set and these email triage tips, you can easily prioritize and address incoming messages while effortlessly maintaining an organized and tidy mailbox at the same time.