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!