Email team collaboration: 10 ways to optimize your collaboration

Effective collaboration is essential in the high-speed tech world of today. Optimizing your ability to collaborate by using team emails can help organizations cut down on communication lag and execute projects more quickly.

No matter how organized your team may be, there are inevitably going to be technical and communication obstacles. However nearly a third of employees report their organizations are trying to become more team-oriented and adaptable.

One of the easiest and most often used ways of collaborating is email; however, email can be a major drain on time and productivity if not managed correctly. Every day, the average professional receives 121 emails.

Here are some tips for optimizing email team collaboration in your organization.

Key takeaways

• Use better communication tools for clearer team collaboration.
• Combine email with platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams for shared discussions.
• Keep emails and files neatly sorted for easy access.
• Create and share project wikis via email for shared knowledge.
• Add a personal touch to team emails with casual chats and multimedia.
• Merge personal and work calendars into your email for unified scheduling.
• Encourage sharing feedback across teams directly through email.
• Combine all email accounts into one platform for simplicity.
• Acknowledge and appreciate team efforts via email.
• Make email tasks more efficient with scheduling, reminders, and to-do lists.

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Improved communication tools

When projects fail, it is often because of poor communication.

When employees are working together to see a project completed, everyone on the team needs to be on the same page, meaning robust communication needs to happen.

This doesn’t mean overloading your coworkers with information but allowing a communication space where issues can be discussed as they pop up.

Ensuring transparent communication can encourage employee participation and a sense of belonging. When an employee doesn’t get updates or only receives some information, they can feel alienated.

Email tools can display essential information and provide an open method of communication between team members.

Colleagues can stay up-to-date on meetings, agendas, and overall progress.

Integration with other communication tools

Of course, there are many other methods of communicating within your team, so try using your email platform with other communication tools.

You can use team email tools that integrate with your email provider giving you access to audio and video meetings, among other sharing features. Like unified communication solutions such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, this enables your team to streamline discussions without leaving the email platform.

Organizing your messages and files

You’ll always want to quickly find what you're looking for. Organizing your documents and messages into virtual mailboxes and files will also make you more productive.

Use your email’s tags, stars, labels, and pins. Name your emails with easy-to-remember categories to find them more quickly.

Configure your files with the necessary access settings and keep them in a place that can be integrated with your inbox.

Wikis and co-creating Wikis

Creating project wikis via email, and inviting team members to add to the wikis, can help share important and sometimes forgotten information that can help co-workers stay on target.

Wikis can be used as a helpful reference to describe your project’s parameters, client details, contract scope, and others.

You can use your email’s third-party tool or the “notes” feature to create and share wikis. To reference a timeline of events, try the Mailbutler Notes feature that shows a history of changes and by whom.

Make teamwork on email personal and fun

People work best when they feel at ease. Depending on how rigid your working environment is, it’s best when the physical and virtual workplace is relaxed. This can enhance communication, satisfaction, and work productivity.

Encouraging colleagues to converse casually, when appropriate, is a great team builder. You can also add bits of multimedia into your chats and messages like emojis, GIFs, stickers, photos, and others.

Sync calendars to your email

Calendars are a great way to organize and implement assignments. However, switching between calendar apps and email platforms is slow and inefficient.

You should integrate your personal and working calendars into your email platform, making sure your schedules are synchronized on your phones, laptops, etc.

Project managers may also opt for creating and sharing a working calendar for the team. Co-workers can sync it with their own devices and monitor any changes.

Providing a space for cross-team feedback

A successful project requires feedback from everyone. Whether it’s a member of the sales department or the design team, they need a collaborative space for constructive conversation.

By integrating real-time feedback into your email workflow, you’ll ensure everyone receives the right information at the right time. People won't have to wait to finish a campaign to get feedback.

At times when you have to wait to receive feedback, the project could be too far gone to go back to square one.

Integrate your inboxes

If you have multiple email accounts from separate email platforms, these need to be integrated so that you don’t have to move between multiple tabs.

You need to be able to browse through your messages seamlessly, so choose a team email tool that can incorporate multiple mailing services like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, etc.

Use email to recognize team contributions

Be sure to use email to recognize and reward positive contributions to your project by email.

Showing appreciation for a team member’s work in a project management email boosts morale and inspires them to continue the same kind of work.

Sending personal emails of recognition to everyone on the team can also be effective.

Try sending short thank-you messages by chat. To have the greatest impact on team collaboration, send both messages of appreciation and talk directly to the person.

Streamline email workflows

Completing several tasks using the same email platform makes work easier and coordination better. Using multiple platforms makes for multiple errors.

Some ways you can streamline your workflows using emailing tools include:

• Schedule your message delivery. Using these kinds of reminders to schedule sending emails to your team is helpful when things are busy or when you have team members located in different time zones.
• Set reminders. Set reminders for completing email tasks so you can prioritize which emails and messages are most important.
• Make to-do lists. Use your email platform’s task lists to note down assignments and check their progress
• Identify priority notifications. Customize how you receive emails by adding a “priority” label or something similar to specific senders. You can also set your email notification settings accordingly.

Improve your email collaboration with Mailbutler

Mailbutler allows you to integrate multiple app integrations and offers features that can make team collaboration faster and more effective.

Team email collaboration FAQs

How do I write an email for a collaboration? 

Make sure the email for collaboration is clear and concise to ensure that everyone involved in the project is on the same page. Use a clear subject line that summarizes the content of the email and provides context for the team members. The body of the email should be concise, with bullet points or numbered lists used to make information easier to read and understand.

Use a professional tone, avoid sarcasm and humor, and use proper grammar and spelling to ensure that the email is professional and respectful. Respond to the email in a timely manner and use email productivity tools such as Mailbutler to help email management and organization.

Which is an example of team collaboration? 

Team collaboration is a group project in which the members of a team work together to achieve a shared goal or objective. In a team collaboration, team members may have different roles and responsibilities, however, all of them contribute to the final success of the project. 

They may communicate and collaborate through email, shared documents, virtual meetings, and other tools to ensure that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goal. The success of the project depends on the ability of team members to collaborate effectively, share their ideas, and work together to overcome any challenges that might appear. You can check out our email collaboration examples from various experts.

What is a collaborative email?

A collaborative email is an inbox that allows multiple team members to access and work from it. Instead of using personal email accounts, companies can provide login credentials to the entire team to avoid issues with email organization, time efficiency, and lack of productivity. 

Collaborative inboxes allow easy access for everyone, enhance productivity and efficiency as a team, and reduce costly mistakes. With collaborative email, users can assign, delegate, and send notes in an email simultaneously. This approach can help teams keep track of progress and reduce cluttered inboxes, which leads to a more trustworthy perception of the brand.