Now I have used this setup myself on my corporate email account and it is quite useful so I am going to share it to you all:
It is always good to request a IMAP account if your company or ISP supports it, as it saves all emails and folders structure on the server side Set bunch of filters that moves all of the unimportant/non-urgent ones to folders. I have ExternalList directory with subdirectories for external mailing lists, and InternalList for internal memos. Create Archive folder for archiving. I move those important one that needed to reference in the near future to different topics in subdirectories. Create Action folder for getting actual things done. I create @Reply for things that is important to reply; @Today for things that is urgent; @Wait for emails that need to wait for someone; and @Read that I need to read it (eventually). Under Archive, I also create subdirectories of Months (i.e. 2005-05). Anything that has not moved to Action folders, I move them to those archive. And finally I have Spam folder for spamassassin to do its magic.
This way I will keep my Inbox clean. This is a very good approach:
It will save you a lot of time to search through your emails. You will know what is your email action items are.
