Event Planner Hacks are hard to come by, and s an event planner myself, I know one of the hacks we all wish to conquer is getting our inboxes under control. I like to think of myself as the Marie Kondo of emails. There are a lot of things in my life which are still a mess, my tops aren’t neatly folded by any means, but the inbox thing I’ve got down. Because of this, it’s super rare for me to miss an email, or not see something. It also helps me to not be ruled by my emails, and it full-on freaks me out if my inbox gets too out of control. If you can function without my tips below, then I salute you. But if you’re struggling to get it under control, below are some of my tips to an inbox Marie Kondo would be proud of.
Make templates of everything
I used to do this all the time when I was a corporate planner. For the emails I would send regularly, like speaker briefings and confirmations, I’d make a template in word with big highlighted XXXX where I needed to change the information. For example, for a speaker briefing, I would write “Dear XXX, We’re looking forward to having you speak at XXX, your time slot is XXX”. Don’t forget the power of a mail merge, a good spreadsheet can save you so much time when it comes to these monotonous emails.
Copy and paste emails
I have to admit, I still do this now. When I’m sending venue enquiries, I’ll write out the email and include a breakdown in bullet points of date, times, number of guests, budget, and any other information the venue will need to know to quote. This can be done as a template like point 1. I triple check to make sure everything is there, and then copy and paste to each venue, as I address it “Hello,” or “Dear Sir/Madam,”. I know this is impersonal, but once people respond I reply like a human. The only problem with this is if you include a mistake, you’ve sent the mistake to everyone!
Set Signatures for emails you send regularly
There’s a pattern of automation occurring in this post… This one is similar but slightly different. Save you have an event coming up with you have 110 RSVP emails in your inbox for. Instead of typing out each time “Thanks for your email, you’ve been added to the list” or “Thanks for your email, you’re on the waiting list”, I would create two signatures, with this text in. That way, you only need to write “Dear Sally,”, then click the right signature.
Put things in folders
I’ve tried many different tactics for this. To be clear, in Outlook, I’d use categories, and Apple mail I use folders. I like working through email event by event, rather than as they come in. So in Outlook, I would create a category for each event, and in the morning I’d go through and assign a category to each email. In Apple Mail, I simply have a folder for each event, and a subfolder called “replied”. I drag emails into their event folder, then drag them into replied once I’ve replied. Rocket science, I know.
Delete when you’re done
I’ve never been one who’s scared of deleting emails. I’m probably a bit too far the other way if anything, but I honestly can’t work with a messy inbox. It freaks me out too much. Obviously for important information which someone may need to know, either save it to your files or drag it into a folder. I never use the folder for navigation as the search function on emails is so good now. For example, I have a folder in my inbox called “DONE”, for emails which no longer need anything from me but I might need to look back on. Other than that, it all gets deleted. Clear inbox, clear mind!
I hope you found this list of event planner hacks useful. Marie Kondo would be proud!
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