Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant, and in this Gmail optimization tutorial, we're
going to go through how to use filters and tags to keep your inbox squeaky clean well
as squeaky clean as possible, right?
Cause in inboxes, almost never hit inbox zero, but we're going to get as close as possible
in this tutorial.
So, we'll dive into my screen.
I'll walk you through how to set those up and using the email bucket system, when you
don't have time to meticulously create a filter or tag for every single email that comes in.
Timestamp table of contents in the description, along with some other helpful videos that
walks you through my entire four digital business quadrant system, if you are a agency owner,
entrepreneur, or freelancer, and are looking for just a overarching system to stay organized
across your entire file management project management and of course inbox.
So with that, let's go ahead and jump in.
Now the very first thing I do in the morning is, move conversations to where they need
to be.
So, I use my primary tab as a way as a collection box for all of the messages.
So, if I get a new message that hasn't been tagged yet, I want it to be showing up in
my primary or it should be showing up in my promotions.
So I'll just skip ahead in promotions, this is all the automated emails that come to me
that aren't written by an actual real person.
So you just want to put all of those in the promotions tab, of course, Gmail will eventually
learn that which messages to go in there.
And when you're checking in the morning, that should be the absolute last place you go.
Now, the next one I want to talk about is updates.
And this is where all of your admin emails come in.
So whatever software you're using, you can see here.
I have an Upwork and G suite message, and this is just kind of the technical boring
administrative stuff.
That's what should go there.
I use forms for private and personal and then social, I use for ongoing conversation.
So, if I've already replied to something and they're replying back to me, that's what I
should see in my social tab.
So, that's a quick breakdown of how I use tabs.
And I'm going to go ahead and drag this over to social because I know I've already responded
and I'm going to drag this client email over to social because I remember what the conversation
is about and I can check it later on in the day.
So now you just have a list of new emails, ones that need neither, either need to be
categorized or things that I need to add to my task list for the day.
Now let's go ahead and create a filter.
So as you can see, there are a couple of messages that haven't been filtered yet.
This one is a response from one of our autoresponder sequences.
So I can just click here and come up to labels and then, tell Gmail how I want to label it.
So I know this is going to be a audience question.
So I'll go ahead and check the two boxes that I want it to be labeled and I'll click apply.
Now of course you might not always have label setup for what comes in.
So let's go through actually creating a new label or creating a new rule.
So for that, I'm going to go ahead and click on what I'm assuming as a marketing email
here.
And after a quick read, it's clear that this is a marketing email.
So I'm going to go ahead and copy the domain that it came from the email address, and then
click these three little dots and click filter messages like these.
Now, luckily it popped up.
I always copy it just because sometimes it doesn't always pull in the actual address.
And this is especially true, if you're getting a lot of marketing emails or spam, sometimes
it will show this random sequence of numbers or letters and say, it's a list and that's
just completely useless.
So, I always copy just in case and for this, I just want to create a filter for the actual
email.
So up here, I can click on skip inbox, auto archive it, or if it's from someone important,
I might go ahead and start.
For this particular instance, I just don't want to see it again.
And I'm also going to click on apply to matching conversation sometimes this number will be
very high and if you're doing this for the first time, there's going to probably be more
than one message.
And so you want to click this box to make sure that it applies to every message from
this email address.
Now, here we can go ahead and click on, apply filter.
Now, if you already have a filter, you can go ahead and scroll through or you click on
new label.
So I'm going to click new label just to show you what it would look like.
And you go ahead and create a label that you want applied every time a marketing message
comes in, or a cold email comes in.
In this particular instance, I'll just call this marketing emails, affiliate request.
And then if you have a OCD structure for organizing your labels, you can go ahead and click this
dropdown menu and choose a label as you, that you already set up as the parent.
So it works very similar to a file structure where you can have a top one and you have
one inside that, one inside that, one inside that, one inside that, you know, just kind
of like those little Russian dolls.
You just keep going down the rabbit hole.
I recommend only going three or four files deep.
I think after that, you're probably going to be way too OCD with how you're organizing
things.
And once you've chosen your sub-label, you can go ahead and click on create.
So now we have a new filter and I can click on create filter.
And now that we're back to the conversation, you can see the filter has been applied.
And if this particular email ever emails me again, it's automatically going to be archived.
Now the whole goal of setting this up, like that's all there is to it to actually setting
this up, the whole goal is to maximize the number of emails that hit your inbox that
have a filter or label already on them.
So let's go ahead and go back to my inbox here.
And I actually only have one email today that didn't already have a filter, but if we go
over to social, you'll see that, what I like to do is have different color codes for your
filters.
So, let's go through how to do that right now.
So let's find that filter that we just made, scrolling all the way down here, marketing
emails, and then I can click these three little dots and either remove it, add a sub-label,
which will be a label that goes underneath it, or I can choose a label color.
So let's just say, I want it to be a dull red or something like that to let me know
that it's not an important email, I tend to try and use really bright colors for important
emails.
So as you can see in social, red is client because that's most important to me, that
stands out.
And then this Aqua color is for potential clients who are emailing me.
Then if we go into promotions and updates, you'll see, I just leave those gray because
they're not really super important.
And then forms as well, I leave gray, you can see here, my internet provider continues
to send me marketing emails, but what’s really nice about this is, I can quickly see
who sent it and I can see what the headline is.
None of these really apply to me, I should probably book something on Airbnb to save
40 bucks apparently.
And I just click and archive.
And what's so great about this is, I can just read through the headlines, actually, this
should go in forms.
So, I click and drag that over there and you can see, do I want this to always go to this
particular tab or bucket?
Yes.
So when I get those in the future, it will go to forms where it belongs.
So, I'll go ahead and just archive that real quick.
Updates, I see that I don't actually need to read any of these.
And then I go ahead and click archive.
You'll notice this first one from Miles Beckler, he's another great YouTuber, who talks all
about digital marketing.
I actually leave him in updates because eventually every once in a while, I like reading his
emails, but typically for most promotion emails, like ones from AppSumo, I'll just read the
headline.
And if I don't need that software, I'll just click archive and be done with it.
And that's how you can quickly, quickly clean out your inbox.
And so now all that's left is, giving a label to this last one.
I actually know which one this is.
I know we have to blur out all the names and I'm just going to give the label to slash
prospects.
And now I can go ahead and archive it.
And just like that, everything has been labeled.
And now I can go through and actually start reading the emails.
Now, if you don't have time to go through the arduous process of creating a filter or
rule and label for every single new email that comes in at the very least, just move
it to the tab that it should be.
And that way you can clear out your primary and social tabs.
So, you actually can stay on top of interacting with real people.
And any important email, I recommend actually filtering your important emails first, not
necessarily all of the automated spam ones so that you can, have a really bright color
show up every time someone important emails you, because if you're like anyone, you have
a lot of emails and if you're just scrolling, it's really hard to know which one's important.
So, if you apply a red label to your clients or your coworkers, your business partners,
like whoever's important to you in terms of being emailed, especially potential business,
that way it's very easy to see, Oh, that one's red.
I need to check, that one out because it might be potential business or it's a client emailing
you.
So that does it for how to create your filters.
Now, I want to give you a brief overview of how I organize my filters and inbox to keep
things clean.
So, I'll scroll back up to the top here.
So you can see on the side I actually number things so, it's very easy for me to just start
typing in a number and actually get to what I want.
So, zero is all the admin stuff, accounting, receipts vendors.
Now I'm very OCD.
So, I actually have a tab for every single vendor.
So, if I have done any business, any time in the past six or seven years, there is a
label for that vendor.
And of course, I use Google voice for business.
So, my voicemails are transcribed and showed up here here.
Team, I create a label for everyone on my team.
I'm not going to click that because I have to blur everything out.
And then for content, if I get any questions from people emailing me from YouTube or content
around the web, then this is where I'll actually organize that.
And then I also have a free membership website.
So, if I get any questions about it, I put it there and then when I need to update the
membership website or any to fix anything, it's very easy to go there and see all of
the questions that have been asked so that I know what's most important to work on, to
improve the site.
Now, number two is sales funnel.
So, this is where I put all of our inbound leads.
And then if I have any sales questions about any of the products that we have, I only have
three digital products right now.
Then I put them there and that will just help me when I'm creating the landing pages and
the sales pages and putting together the sales emails, I can go there and say, see what questions
are being asked over and over again.
And then that tells me how to improve our marketing messaging.
And then second to last, we have product.
And so this is where if we have any students in our courses asking questions, coaching
students and clients, I have an individual tab that's in bright red, as you saw earlier
for every single client that we have.
So I always know those are the most important emails to respond to.
So red means do it now.
And then I use less bright colors for everything else.
Now the final one I have, is swipe file and as a digital marketer, I subscribed to a lot
of other great marketers and other great businesses.
And so, I just want to every once in a while, go in and see what kinds of emails they're
sending.
And so, this list is just all of the automated sequences that are hitting my inbox.
So, if you're not a business owner or marketer, all of these would represent things that you
should unsubscribe to.
I do unsubscribe to a lot of things, but there are a lot of companies that I don't mind hearing
from every once in a while, but I always set it up to auto archive so that, I'm making
the decision to go read the email, as opposed to whoever's sending me the emails, making
the decision to throw it at me.
And so that's all there is to it, to optimizing and organizing your inbox.
Hopefully you too can reach inbox zero some day.
And if you got some value out of this video, go and hit that like button and subscribe
for more productivity and organization, deep dives, just like this one, over on the channel,
I'm documenting the entire process of what it takes to be successful, growing a digital
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love.