A Complete Guide to Email Project Management for SMBs

Email project management is an increasingly popular way to manage business projects efficiently and effectively. Unfortunately, simple platforms or email clients like Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo can’t help you manage everything. 

You still need an email project management tool.

But let’s back up a bit. What is email project management in the first place? As a small and medium business, why do you need to do email project management? 

In this article, you’ll learn the answers to those questions. You’ll also learn what features to look for in an email project management tool for SMBs. 

Let’s get started!

What Is Email Project Management?

Email project management is the use of an email inbox to manage projects and collaborate with team members. With email project management, task tracking, communications, and to-do lists are all managed within the email address inbox. 

Email project management software includes features like time tracking and report generation. Some email project management tools give you important reminders and come with bug tracking features as well.

The ultimate email project management tools for SMBs are tailored specifically to their needs. For the best results, SMBs should complement these tools with email verification tools. These tools will help ensure the important emails will reach the intended recipients in the first place.

Why Businesses Should Use Email Project Management Software?

Managing complex projects via email can be a challenging task. With so many tasks and emails flying back and forth, it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks, both for project managers and individual employees.

With an email-based project management solution, businesses can have a personalized space to streamline their team collaboration and store important documents. Email project management software provides an array of features such as automated notifications and task management. These features enable businesses to better organize their projects and manage deadlines.

With the tool, businesses can also track projects in real-time and get instant updates. The best part is, they can do this without having to search through tons of emails. The result is that teams save time and money. 

This ability to search through a full inbox becomes even critical when businesses conduct email outreach. Email outreach involves targeting a specific audience to get them to take a specific action. Businesses can perform an email outreach for link building purposes, for example. This can help their website SEO and brand authority.

With email project management, businesses can track their outreach campaign’s progress over time. This helps ensure they reach their target audience with the right messages. Ultimately, they reach their outreach goals, too. 

Furthermore, businesses can access email project management software remotely and via mobile devices. This allows the project manager or employee to work on the go. Because many of these software solutions come with encrypted storage options, teams can be assured their projects are safe and secure as well.

How Can Small Businesses Benefit from Email Project Management Software?

Email project management allows small and medium businesses to stay organized and productive. 

That’s particularly important with SMBs, where one person has multiple roles to play for the success of a business. Without a business tool to track previous interactions with customers or other stakeholders, an SMB employee will have a hard time crafting the right message to send or taking whichever other action is required.

The right email project management software has the following features that SMBs can take advantage of:

Simple to Use: Email project management software makes it easy to set up and maintain a workflow that can be customized to your team’s specific needs. Email project management tools have a user-friendly interface. Employees don’t need to undergo intensive training to understand how to use the tool and its specific features. 

Automation: Email management tools come with a range of automation features that can help businesses save valuable time and energy. With the email tools, for instance, SMBs can schedule meetings and send out reminder emails automatically. The tool can also allow for email automations. Like gmail automations, these can be set off by other specific triggers, actions, or searches.

Different project management tools for email can also help with sharing updates with the team. Instead of sending one message manually per person, the tool allows for the sending of the same message en masse. 

Integrated Workflows: Email project management allows for an integrated workflow so all team members can access and track tasks from their own computers. SMBs don't have to waste time deciding on which communication channel to use, as all communications and document management can be done in one place.

Some email project management tools allow businesses to create Kanban boards. Kanban boards are visual task management tools that organize tasks into columns. This gives teams an easy way to track and organize project tasks, keeping everyone on the same page.

This system also allows team members to ensure that the deadlines for each task are met. This helps ensure overall project goals are met, too.

Effective Task Management: Email project management makes it easy for teams to assign and manage tasks properly. 

Team members can easily turn emails into tasks, set due dates, and share resources in one place. So, if your team is creating marketing content for your website, for instance, you can easily attach a style guide for each project. This way, everyone knows how and by what standard content is to be completed. You can share images and other types of content, too.

Effective email project management software increases the transparency of projects and helps SMBs stay on top of them. With this tool, the SMB can meet its project goals, and, ultimately, its business goals, too.

Features to Look for in Email Project Management Software for SMBs

Email project management is an efficient way for SMBs to streamline their workflow and improve productivity. When it comes to choosing the right email project management tool for your business, there are some features to consider:

  1. Integration of Emails

Email integration is an important aspect of project management for small and medium businesses.

With email integration, SMBs can create an email list composed of specific project team members. So these members can send business emails to their colleagues directly from the tool and receive notifications when tasks have been completed or need to be addressed. 

The tool helps ensure members can also view relevant communication on specific projects and tasks. This helps keep everyone on the same page and allows each member to determine what email needs to be replied to. It also helps team members determine which part of the project requires some form of action.

Having an integrated project management system with emails gives teams a centralized area to communicate about their projects, without having to constantly switch between different apps.

  1. Planning and Scheduling

Planning and scheduling are crucial in project management for small companies. Planning projects help ensure that individual tasks are completed in the most efficient way possible. Meanwhile, scheduling ensures that deadlines are met.

With email project management software, small and medium businesses have access to powerful tools that enable them to plan and schedule projects with ease. 

Project team members can easily add comments to email messages so that others can review any project updates that have been made. 

Since all emails are sent out with reminders attached, project teams are less likely to miss important deadlines. Even if something comes up, team managers can easily spot these gaps and plan a course of action if necessary. This is because email project management software allows for a holistic visualization of the project.

  1. Task Creation and Team Collaboration

Task creation and team collaboration are important aspects of project management. Email project management software can help streamline task creation and team collaboration. 

With email project management tools, teams can easily create a series of tasks with relevant information, such as the task description, due dates and additional instructions. The tools can also help managers assign tasks to multiple people, making collaboration easier.

For tasks upload email attachments that give additional information or resources for the completion of projects. These attachments can include documents, spreadsheets, images, and more. Small businesses can use this feature for better collaboration. Since all pertinent information is readily available for team members, tasks relevant to the project’s success can proceed seamlessly.

Email project management tools also help organize tasks in folders and assign labels to these. This makes it easy to quickly find tasks related to specific projects or deadlines. It also ensures that everyone is aware of their responsibilities and understands the scope of the project. 

Collaboration through email project management lets teams work together more effectively even when they’re not in the same room. They can work together from anywhere while still having access to all the tools they need. 

In Closing

Email project management allows you to keep track of tasks, project progress, and deadlines from a central data hub. For those who want to stay on top of projects and also prefer using email as a communication tool, an email project management software solution is ideal. It’s particularly useful for small and medium businesses that have employees juggling multiple tasks at the same time. 

Ultimately, the best email project management tool should come with email integration, planning and scheduling, and task creation and team collaboration features. But if you have a limited budget, you can just look for the tool with the features you need the most. You can then upgrade your tool in the future as your budget allows.

The bottom line is, with email project management and tools for this purpose, SMBs can stay organized and efficient in a fast-paced work environment. Use those to your advantage and you can achieve your project goals with ease. Good luck!

More from our blog...

We're on a quest to build the best issue tracking, help desk, and project management tool for all kinds of teams.

Subscribe to news and updates and follow us on Twitter.
We will never share your email address with third parties.

Give DoneDone a try today!

No credit card needed. Just sign up for a free trial, invite your team, and start getting things done with DoneDone.