How to Mark a Message as Important in Outlook

Outlook is one of the most popular email platforms across the world. Through Outlook, Microsoft offers a solid base on which businesses and individuals can send and receive crucial messages. You’re here because you wish to find out how to mark a message as important in Outlook. It’s a useful thing to learn, particularly if you send hundreds of emails on a daily basis. 

Flagging some of the messages that you are sending as important makes them visible within the recipient’s inboxes. The average business person receives approximately 121 emails each day. You do not want to have your important messages lost in the clutter.

Step to flag an email as important in Outlook

The following is how to mark a message as important in Outlook: 

1. Compose the message that you wish to send out. 
2. Click on message in the menu at the top of the screen. 
3. Go to Tags. 
4. Click on High Importance.
5. Send the email.

That’s how to mark an email as important in Outlook.

What happens when you send a message marked as high importance? 

But what happens when you mark a message that you are sending as being highly important? 

The message will have an exclamation mark added to it when it is delivered to the recipient’s inbox. The exclamation mark is visible  to the recipient. The aim is to make it stand out from the crowd and highlight it’s urgency. 

Typical emails are sent with normal importance—not flagged in any way. Note that you should only mark key messages as important. Otherwise people will begin ignoring all your messages, whether or not they have an exclamation mark. 

Other ways of ensuring that your emails get read

In this article, we showed you how to label a message as important in Outlook. We noted that this is done to ensure that your message stands out in your inbox. But are there other ways through which you can maximise visibility of your messages. 

• One thing you can do is to ensure the subject of your email reflects its importance is label your message as “Urgent Action Required.” Of course, many spam messages come bearing such subject lines, but along with other signals, this is a good way of making an important message stands out. You can also include the due date. An example is,“Due Date Approaching.” That’s sure to catch the recipient’s eye. 
• You also need to ensure you do not send out spam to your contacts. If you do this often, they will start thinking all your messages are spam. As a result, they will not bother opening any of your messages, even ones that are important. People are so overwhelmed with marketing emails out there that they have adopted a coping mechanism. That involves completely ignoring messages that they think are from irrelevant senders. 
• In the event that the message you are sending is really important, you have the option of calling the receiving party to tell them that you have sent them an email. That way, they will be sure to check their inbox for your message. 

Crossware Mail Signature for Microsoft 365 helps you create professional email signatures

Email signatures are another tool  you can use to enhance the usefulness of your messages. Signatures have various functions. You can use yours to provide additional information about your company, including details of your social media handles. 

It’s also possible to sell products directly from your email signature. You can have a banner in there that offers a discount to people who buy certain products or services. The benefits of email signatures are many, but they need to be done right. 

Otherwise, they can become a double-edged sword. This is where we, as Crossware, come into play with our email signature platform. We are one of the most popular email signature solutions providers in the world. We are partners with Microsoft and HCL. Our email signature platform can also be used on Microsoft 365, Microsoft Exchange and HCL Domino.

We offer drag and drop solutions that simplify the process of creating signatures, for both large and small companies. It is our understanding that decentralisation of email signature creation and management can be a problem to a brand. 

That is why we have provided the tools that are needed to ensure that email signatures are managed from one location, even for very large organisations. In doing this, we ensure that there is still scope for customisation by different departments. 

Sign up for the Crossware free trial today to get started.  

About Author