Since Ray Tomlinson sent the first electronic mail (email) in 1971 the number of email users has increased to 3.9 billion daily1. And it doesn’t look like email is going anywhere soon! Roughly 281 billion email messages were sent and received every day worldwide in 2018 and it is projected this number will increase to over 347 billion in 20232.
With all these electronic missives flying in and out of our email software, it’s not surprising that fewer of us are achieving ‘Inbox Zero’3.
The three most common actions associated with handling business email communications are action, delegate (to a virtual assistant, perhaps), or delete. But for peace of mind, virtual assistants, freelancers, and business owners should add a fourth: archive.
I recently advised a client to archive and backup their email before a move to a new hosting company, which required hunting down some email archiving software that would work on their Windows/Outlook set up and be straightforward to use. The right archiving software will connect direct to your IMAP/POP3 email accounts as well as a range of popular email programs—or is that old fashioned now, perhaps apps would be more apt.
There are several email archiving apps out there but the one I pointed my clients to is MailStore Server for Windows (7 SP1 or later). The reason I put this particular archiving software forward is because it includes a free trial, easy-to-follow documentation, and did everything my clients needed it to do: archive, backups of archives, and a built-in user interface (UI) to facilitate searching within messages and attachments, exporting messages as PDFs, and meeting GDPR obligations.
Additionally, MailStore Software GmbH’s customer base includes thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses, suggesting their software is well tested in the SME arena.
I’m not going into the intricacies of archiving here, but there’s a detailed write up on the MailStore site that explains the difference between an archive and a backup.
For those discerning people out there working on their Macs, like me, I have recently started using Mail Archiver X for Mac OS (Big Sur (10.16)–Sierra (10.12)), which was simple to install and start using.
And finally, here’s an interesting statistic for start-up business owners: ‘73% of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email’1. So don’t worry too much if you’re not down with WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and the likes just yet.
Links
1. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-stats
2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/255080/number-of-e-mail-users-worldwide/
3. https://web.archive.org/web/20140326171708/http://inboxzero.com/
