Email Management: Let Others Read Your Email!

Date Posted: February 19, 2016

Let others read my email?! What?! No, it’s not what you think! Just read on…

Have you ever locked yourself out of your house? What do you do once you are locked out of your house? You pretty much are stuck to have to wait until someone lets you in because you don’t have access to the key. For those that know, it feels like a huge waste of time…and time is precious.

This is the same with important emails that contain content that other people in an association need to access. There might be relevant information in an employee’s inbox that a colleague needs to use, but what happens when the owner of the email isn’t there? They could have quit, went on vacation, fallen ill, died, to list a few scenarios.

Why You Need To

Having email only stored in one person’s Outlook, or whatever email client they use, can lead to several problems, especially if the owner of the email is unable to be contacted when needed. Say you are finding a solution for a client that has already made progress with another employee; starting over would be a waste of time, as well as it’d probably upset the client. Email that is only in one person’s inbox is unreliable and inconvenient because that person could unexpectedly not be there.

Not having access to information could be the difference between finishing a work project over a week, rather than the actual time which could be a day or two. It could be the difference between getting a new client or losing a potential client.

CRM

Solutions to this problem include finding ways to give access to multiple people for much-needed information. In Alinity, most clients copy and paste the content from an email into their CRM system, so that other employees can access the information.

Shared Folders

Some offices prefer having a shared folder for different departments where employers and employees can submit files that are relevant to their colleagues. This method is handy, but if a document has been neglected to be put into the folder when another person needs it, then it is useless.

Collaborative Email

Collaborative or shared email accounts are also a very useful way to organize an inbox used for multiple users. Unlike the folder method, emails and information are sent directly into the inbox rather than being manually dragged and dropped, decreasing the chance of missing information. On a shared email account, the main user can give permissions to other users. Permissions usually include the ability to read emails, reply with your own name or on behalf of the group, select tasks (such as solving a client’s specific request or issue), or assigning tasks to others. Other abilities some collaborative email services provide also include the ability to add tags to emails for easier searching through email. Collaborative email can be found in a great email management system.

Email Management System

Not all email management systems provide the above collaborative email feature, but Alinity definitely does! It provides associations with a unique and convenient email management system that will make organizing email amongst your colleagues easier.

License Management Software and Email

You should ask you association management software or license management software vendor if they have an email management system with these features. It can be a huge time saver. Make sure to use our software procurement checklist on any software you have interest in, it will save you time by providing consistent criteria from all potential software.