Gmail

Setting up your signature

1. Creating your personal signature

Go to this online tool, Hubspot: https://www.hubspot.com/email-signature-generator

Make sure to disable the 'Created with HubSpot' button

Select 'Template 3' (the other ones don't display well on a mobile phone).

In the fields editing section, fill your personal details (up to you what to include and what not, but for sure your email and the OCC website).

In the 'Company name' field, please fill Open Cultural Center Spain or Open Cultural Center Greece. It's up to you to add your LinkedIn and/or Twitter profile (don't add Instagram or Facebook in any case. If you don't want to add your personal social profiles, please add those of OCC.

In the styling section, put #15D4BE as 'Theme colour'.

As font, select 'Verdena' and change size to 'Small'

If you want to add a profile picture to your signature (reccomended for more personal communication), you need to upload a profile picture over here. Then, once done, right click and click 'Obtain link', and copy the link and paste it in the 'Profile picture' field in Hobspot.

In the 'Company logo' field, fill this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ow3heCWIkVjRafZ3xkX399qXPhZNLXdw/view?usp=sharing

In the 'CTA color' field, fill #15D4BE.

2. Adding it to your Gmail account

1. Log in to your Gmail account, then click the configuration wheel in the top right corner.

2. Click on 'View all settings" from the drop down menu.

3. Scroll down until you reach the email signature editor, then paste your new email signature there.

4. The only change you need to make is make 'Open Cultural Center Spain/Greece' bold

5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click 'Save changes’.

The result!

Best practices for email management

The key to using work email in an organised and efficient way is to treat it as a to-do list to avoid accumulating hundreds of emails.

Basically, with that logic, your email inbox should only have emails that still require an action from your side. To do so and to keep your inbox clean and neat, in general, for each email that you have in your inbox, either:

• Archive when you want to save the email if but when you don't need it anymore for now;

• Delete when an email is Spam, not relevant or simply not useful;

• Postpone after sending a reply and when you need a reply from the receiver so you can follow up in case they don't reply (if someone replies, Gmail is smart enough to remove the postpone option).

Detailed tips

• If an email is completely useless, DELETE it. However, the most important action is to archive emails.

• If an email is not important or doesn’t require any action, ARCHIVE it. You won’t lose the email, it will just go to another folder (“All”) and disappear from your inbox.
• Another option is to SNOOZE emails until later after sending a reply, which is postponing them and temporarily removing them from your inbox until you want it to pop up again (you can select when).
• If you are having an email conversation and you replied or are waiting for a reply, you can check the “Sent” folder.

• Use LABELS with different colours. A folder will be created (e.g., “High priority”).
• Use FILTERS (Settings < All settings < Filters and blocked addresses). You can select categories to classify emails and where future emails under this category would go. Another option: “filter similar emails” when you receive one.
• UNSUBSCRIBE from unnecessary newsletters.

• Use SLACK to reduce email workload, communicate through Slack channels.

• Use the READING PANE to keep your inbox in view while reading and replying to emails (Settings < All settings < Inbox < Reading pane).
• If you want to save an email that is specifically important, you can Star a message as well instead of labelling it

Useful addons/tools/plugins

• Connect TRELLO to Gmail to easily convert an email to a Trello card
• Connect SLACK to Gmail to easily forward an email to a Slack message
• Useful Google Chrome plugin to check email easily: Checker Plus for Gmail
• Useful Google Chrome plugin to save and insert template emails: CloudHQ Gmail

How to find all the options mentioned above within the Gmail interface