Mark Email as Important in Gmail & Outlook

In today’s digital age, emails are one of the most important ways of business communication. According to the latest statistics, 333 billion emails were sent on a daily level in 2022. It’s no wonder why our inboxes are often loaded with so many emails, making it easy for important messages to get lost. If you’ve ever wondered how to ensure your important messages don’t go unnoticed, you’re not alone. 

One of the easiest ways to ensure your emails stand out is to make them important. Thanks to simple, yet powerful features, you can effectively prioritize your messages. In this blog post, we’ll show you how to mark emails as important in Gmail and Outlook, ensuring your important communications are seen and addressed properly. 

What is Gmail’s Important Folder?

If your email is always full, loaded with messages demanding your attention, it looks like you didn’t make proper priorities. Not all messages are created equal. Some of them should be moved to Gmail’s important folder, especially to filter out spam and cold emails. Gmail’s important folder contains messages that should be handled first, while others can wait longer for your attention. 

Gmail’s important folder is actually not a folder, but a special feature that marks all top-priority messages. When you select this folder in the left pane, Gmail shows you messages marked as important. Technically, it’s an inbox feature, not a separate folder. This way, all of them are gathered together in one place, so you can easily focus on messages that should be addressed first, while less important ones will not distract you. 

Steps to mark an outgoing email as important in Gmail

An important email is marked with the yellow arrow, which means that Google identified that message as an important one based on its algorithms. However, sometimes you may want to mark a sender as important manually. Although you shouldn’t need to do this often, it’s a quick and easy way to prioritize certain messages or senders. Here, we’ll explain how to do it on both desktop and phone devices.

How to mark email as important in Gmail – Desktop Verison 

If you want to make sure your emails don’t end up in spam folder and ensure they are marked as important in the desktop version of Gmail, you need to follow several easy steps. This way, your important messages will be visible first in your inbox: 

1. Open Gmail. The first thing to do is to open Gmail in your web browser
2. Find the message you want to mark
3. Hover your cursor over the message that you want to mark
4. Click the market (which is gray) to turn yellow. Gmail will automatically mark similar messages as important in the future.

How to mark email as important in Gmail – Android version

When you want to mark emails as important in Gmail, you can do it through your mobile phone too. If you use an Android phone, follow these steps:

1. Open a Gmail app on your phone
2. Look for an email that you want to mark as important
3. Tap and hold the email, waiting for a toolbar to appear at the top of the screen
4. Click on the three-dot menu icon
5. Choose “Select as important” from the dropdown menu. Similar messages from the future will be marked as important. 

How to mark email as important in Gmail – iOS version

Just like with Android devices, marking emails as important in Gmail on iOS is simple and helps prioritize your key messages. Here are the steps you should follow: 

1. Open Gmail on your iOS device
2. Find an email that you want to mark
3. Tap and hold the email until a toolbar appears at the top of the screen
4. Tap the three-dot menu icon. 
5. Click on “ Mark as important” and Gmail will mark similar messages as important in the future 

How Gmail decides which Emails are Important

Gmail uses several factors to determine which emails are important, marking them accordingly. We looked at Google’s support page to find out which factors influenced this decision. Here’s what we found: 

• Previous interactions with senders: Gmail tracks how frequently you read and respond to emails from specific senders. If you regularly engage with emails from a particular sender, Gmail will mark future emails from that sender as important. Similar to managing your LinkedIn connections and removing those that are no longer important to you, this action ensures that important business communications are prioritized. 
• Keywords in your emails: The algorithms used by Gmail analyze the content of emails you typically open and read. They look for common keywords and phrases that appear in the emails you find important. When a new email has those keywords, Gmail will probably mark it as important. 
• Your inbox management actions: Gmail learns from how you manage your inbox. If you consistently mark certain messages as important, Gmail will prioritize similar emails in the future. On the other hand, if you frequently delete or archive emails from specific senders, Gmail will consider those messages less important. 

Steps to mark an outgoing email as urgent in Outlook

If you use Outlook as your email client on your desktop, you can easily mark outgoing messages as important. You should follow these simple steps: 

1. Open your Outlook email app
2. Create a new email 
3. Open message options and go to the “Message” tab on the toolbar
4. Set importance level. You need to go to the “Tags” group and click on the “High Importance” button
5. Finis and send your email

Conclusion 

In conclusion, marking emails as important in both Gmail and Outlook is crucial for effective inbox management. By prioritizing important messages, you will ensure that important communications are not overlooked. If you are a small business owner, this is an important skill to adopt, as you’ll always be up to date with the most important business partners. This simple action will help you stay organized and help you response timely to important emails. 

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