Email bloat really takes off when emails are sent to large groups of people, as in the case of birthday announcements, project updates, policy updates, and company news. SharePoint offers a couple of web parts to help offload these messages from your inbox and put them in a more prominent and useful place.

• Announcement web part – This web part is a quick way to get information out. It does not allow for discussion, but you can format text, insert pictures and video, attach files, and write HTML.
• SharePoint Discussion Board – This part allows for the same rich content as the Announcement web part, but it also allows people to respond. You can also subscribe to a discussion board so that you are alerted when someone contributes.
• Site Mailbox (Office 365 only) – Send update emails to your Site Mailbox instead of carbon copying all of the members of your team. Everyone will have access to the email and attachments.
• OneNote – Use a common OneNote notebook on your SharePoint site, and the notes your coworkers write will simply appear in your shared OneNote notebooks.

Using announcements without opening SharePoint

Users can interact with both discussion boards and announcement lists without opening the SharePoint site.

• Email – Mail enable your discussion board or announcement list so that users can email in announcements. For example, instead of emailing project updates to the entire team, a project manager could email from the field to an announcement list.  The email (including attachments) would be automatically published to the project site.
• Emergency Announcements – Create a simple workflow with your announcement list that emails or sends text messages whenever a new announcement marked as an emergency is created. That way, everyone is immediately notified and can get the details from the SharePoint site.
• RSS Feed – RSS feeds are an easy way to read headlines for a lot of information at once. There are many RSS feed readers for mobile and desktop devices. Subscribe to the RSS feed to read company news while in-line at a coffee shop.  For advanced users, use Twitterfeed to create a Twitter, Facebook, or Linkedin stream out of your announcement RSS feed.