As a Virtual Assistant, there are few things that are more important than email to help run your business. But if you don’t have a good email management system in place, you can get overloaded very quickly, and sometimes that can cause problems like lost time while looking for emails, and can even contribute to distraction and overwhelm.
Everyone gets too much email these days – from family to newsletters or mailing list to business emails, the amount of communication moving into our inbox can quickly get out of hand. It is important to set up a system that will help keep you organized, and that will ensure that you can find what you need, when you need it.
Here are a few tips that should help:
Set up folders. If you work with multiple clients, set up a folder for each of them so you can keep their emails separate from each other. The idea of folders is not to keep every last thing that you receive, but to keep it organized so that when you need to work with it, you know where to find it. So I have three folders per client: the main folder, a ‘delegated’ folder, which is where I keep the items that are currently being worked on by my team members, and a ‘done’ folder, which is where everything goes when it’s finished. Delete your ‘done’ folder contents at regular intervals – I delete mine at the end of each month after I have finished my billing (I use my email for a paper trail with my clients). I also have personal folders for the personal emails I receive, which keeps them out of my inbox until I have time to read them.
Set up message rules. Give your email instructions on where to go when it arrives. For your client emails, be sure they automatically go to the client folder. For personal emails, you can set up folders that will hold the emails until you have time or make time to read them. Some days I know I get inundated with back and forth emails from my family, as they have an email discussion. I don’t have to sift through them until I have time, because I automatically send them to a personal folder (same with email jokes!). If you belong to email forums or groups that send you updates by email, sort those to their own folders as well.
Schedule your email management time. While it’s really convenient to keep your email open all day, it is a time drain. Schedule your email management time for just a few times a day – whatever makes sense to you. I would like to pick up my email in early morning, midday and just before the end of day, but I have found that doesn’t work for me, so I typically pick up my email every two hours during my business day. I take about 15 minutes to manage what has come in and respond as I can as necessary. Whatever you decide will work for you is what you should schedule. If you belong to groups or forums, be sure to incorporate a daily processing time for those emails so you can keep on top of the information and respond in a timely fashion.
Create a swipe file. If you are on multiple email lists or newsletter lists, you will probably receive items regularly that you want to keep, that resonate with you for your business. Create one folder in your email that is a ‘swipe’ file – to help you collect ideas that you may want to imitate in your own business (a newsletter that contains an article of tips, a style of sales page, and idea for an event, and that sort of thing). By putting everything into one file, you can process the pieces anytime, and you will easily find everything in one folder. When you process your swipe file, again pare it down to only the pieces you want to use. You can print them and keep a paper swipe file, or you can create a folder on your computer that you can keep things in – but once you have processed something from your swipe file, delete that email.
Delete, delete, delete. Don’t keep everything. Just don’t. When you take your time to process your email, decide what you are going to do with it. Read it, decide it if needs action (ie response, follow up, delegation, to the swipe file, etc.) and handle it. If it’s just information, read it and delete it. There is no need to keep everything once you have read it. Delete it. And empty your deleted folder often as well.
Unsubscribe. While it is easy to subscribe to people’s mailing lists, it sometimes feels like it’s a bad idea to unsubscribe – you don’t want to miss anything! Ask yourself a few questions: do you use the person’s information on a regular basis, do you even read their emails right away, what are you using their information for? If you can’t answer these questions, then you shouldn’t be on their mailing list. Some people suggest that you should only be on 3 people’s mailing lists. I don’t agree, because I am on many, many lists, but I do only stay on the lists whose information interests me and that I use on a regular basis. If I sign up for 3 mailing lists in a week, I try to remove myself from 3 others to keep the balance. If you do not actively participate in a forum or group, don’t remain part of it either.
By putting a system in place that will work for you, you can tame the email monster so that it doesn’t overwhelm you. Just be sure to schedule time to take care of each piece, and be sure to stick to it!