Say goodbye to companywide reply-alls

When work gets busy, communication can get messy. Email threads pile up, filled with one-word responses, missing attachments, and an ever-expanding list of people to CC.

If you want to tidy up your workplace talk, move it to Slack. With a few small adjustments, office communication will be more organized and you’ll have more control. Oh, and you can finally bid adieu to everyone’s least favorite holiday: Company Reply All Day.

Turn lengthy email threads into a dedicated Slack channel

The next time you’re working on a proposal, sales pitch, or really anything that requires help from a whole bunch of coworkers, organize that chatter in a new channel. It’s the easiest way to loop everyone in—and best of all, you don’t need to reply-all to bring in a new set of eyes. Simply @mention their names in the channel, and they’ll automatically be added to the conversation. There, they can quickly catch up on everything chronologically without combing through missing attachments and confusing quote levels.

If you’re working with an outside agency that’s also on Slack, you can invite that team to a shared channel. Those channels can be public, so anyone on both teams can join, or private, meaning only invited guests can see the conversation. Either way, you’ll be able to message one another, upload and share the latest files, and collaborate more efficiently than in a stagnant email chain, awaiting the next person to chime in.

Replace one-liner emails with simple emoji

Slack is great at cutting down on the idle talk that costs you time. How often have you dropped everything and opened your inbox to read an email that just contains some version of “alright”? Thankfully, there’s a way to acknowledge that you received someone’s message in a faster and less intrusive way: drop a 👍 on it. Or a 👌. Or maybe a 🏆. They never result in a distracting ping or unread message tally on the Slack icon. And you’re not limited to standard emoji—Slack lets you create your own custom emoji, which can be used for fun or to help you express complex sentiments in seconds.

If you want to get really fancy, try conducting a poll with emoji. If you’re trying to pick lunch for a team outing, you can have everyone vote for what kind of food they prefer with something like 🍕 or 🍣. It doesn’t require a dozen emails, and it’s easy to tell how things are unfolding at a glance.

Integrate your email with Slack

While Slack helps cut out the clutter that comes with an overflowing inbox, there will always be times when you still need email. Maybe you’re contacting a new vendor, exploring a co-marketing opportunity with a customer, or exchanging a quick note with family over a coffee break. To make sure you don’t miss any of the important stuff, you can always import your email into a Slack channel.

So whether you’re receiving emails right in Slack or eliminating lengthy email chains in favor of channels, there’s one old way of working you surely won’t miss. No more switching contexts (or apps) to read and send your messages. All of your communication can happen in one place: Slack.