The Case for Less Email and More Slack

I think everyone can agree that he or she is grown annoyed with email at least once in his or her life. The unreasonable amount of unsolicited mail that appears in your inbox makes it tough for people to concentrate on what’s important.

Suddenly Slack arose as a collaboration tool that brings all your team communication into one place. At the two year mark, Slack has increased their users to 2.3 million as they improve productivity for organizations across the world. Their immense growth is one of the fastest-growing business apps ever.

Slack aims to simplify the way small team communicates, making it easier to follow relevant conversations by eliminating email. In a recent Slack survey done in July 2015, an average of 48.6% of Slack owners says Slack helped them reduce internal email. A global Slack usage report shows 1.5 billion messages sent per month and 320 million minutes of active Slack usage each weekday!

Slack is an invaluable medium for a firm, small business, or start-up to enhance their workflow. What makes it even a stronger asset is the improvement in team culture. In July 2015, 79% of Slack owners agree their team culture has improved along with 80.4% agreement on growth in team transparency.

Large companies across the globe have moved their team to the Slack platform and turned away from email.

Here are several reasons why businesses should shift more towards Slack for optimal team productivity instead of email:

1. Full Team Communication In One Place

Doesn’t it suck starting your day off with 50 cc’s that aren’t relevant to you and immense amount of new emails? Slack changes that.

Communication in Slack happen all in one place, and you can construct channels for many topics and groups. Slack gives you the capability to design your team conversations in open channels.

For example, you can build a channel for a project, a topic, a team, or anything else that needs team organization. When you are a member of a channel, you have a clear-cut aspect of everything that’s happening.

Not all channels need to be open to all team members. For fine-tuned information, you have the ability to form private channels and invite select team members. With a private channel, no one else can see the happenings in the channel nor join.

Lastly, to get in touch with a colleague directly, you can ping them with a direct message. It is totally private and protected. Even better, Slack’s “Quick Switcher” is the quickest way to open any conversation. You’ll be a master at flipping channels, DMs, and groups in no time!

2. Integration With Your Favorite Apps

Integrate Slack with other web apps can change and enhance the way your team communicates. Connecting apps your team uses on a daily basis makes communication effortless because you just need to proceed to one place to attain all the essential data for your company.

Slack provides over 150 apps created to enhance your team’s productivity.

Some notable apps that integrate with Slack that teams can use include:

Discover the complete Slack app directory listing

3. Preservation

Isn’t it such a hassle when you searched your email inbox for that one piece of information you need, but it is hidden far within a thread? Trust me; I have, and it is not fun at all.

Slack stores all content making it quick and easy to discover from one search box. The best part yet, the search box is also filterable.

For example, you recall a conversation you had with a co-worker on Slack, and they posted a link to a useful resource. By utilizing the Slack search filter choices, you can narrow your search to messages that only include links, a particular person, a distinct channel, or any other filters.

For example, when you select the search box, Slack will assist your search to help you narrow down your results. As you begin to type, related Slack channels, team members, and search history appears.





As many Slack users are members of more than one Slack community, some communities are noisier than others.

Slack allows you to exclude results from those noisy channels, so conversations and files never appear in your search results.

4. Impactful Team Collaboration

Slack is phenomenal for team collaboration and is an efficient mechanism for productive workdays instead of burdening your co-workers with emails.

Slack helps teams manage projects promptly without jeopardizing quality by having team members always in the loop. Members of your team can convey the next steps of a project within defined channels, reducing the noise for others. This is an outstanding way for your team to stay up to date.

One of the main features in Slack is the power to pin messages and files. This makes it easy to share project deliverables and data to receive feedback instantly, so your team stays on top of deadlines.

For example, when you share documents with your company that requires approval, mention the specific team members username, so the correct people are involved.

Another striking feature for team organization is being able to create to-do lists in any channel, direct message, or person. Any involved member can read, add or remove items from the list as well. All you need to do is enter /todo, and you have a to-do list for your team!

If you are not on Slack yet, give it a try. Join their mission to make your work life more productive and cut down wasted time on email.

This article was written by Christopher Church. You can connect with him on Twitter.