Managing your email inbox as a business owner can be quite a task. If you own an e-commerce business there’s customer service requests, order questions, product returns, and many more email questions like these. If you run a service-based business, there are appointments to schedule, questions to answer, follow-ups to conduct, and much more. Having a virtual assistant, who you trust and respect, manage your email for you can take a huge load off of your already busy plate. In today’s blog post, we’ll share how a virtual administrative assistant can help you efficiently and easily manage your email inbox.
Step #1: Give Access to Email Accounts
The first thing you’ll need to do is give the virtual administrative assistant access to all email accounts you’d like to be managed. They’ll need your logins and passwords. This is why having a remote virtual assistant you can trust is essential. There may be confidential information coming across your inbox and you want to ensure that data will remain confidential.
Step #2: Declutter Your Inbox
The second step to an organized email inbox is to begin the process of decluttering. You need to delete any emails you no longer wish or need to receive. If you have a Type A personality and have already taken care of this, excellent! You can move on to Step #3. If not, then you’ll need to eliminate all those needless emails that continually clutter up your inbox.
In order for the virtual assistant to know which emails you no longer want to receive, you’ll need to communicate with him/her. Go through your email inbox, either with your VA or by yourself, and make a list of the emails you no longer wish to receive. The process of unsubscribing to a massive amount of emails can take some time, so you may want to hand this task off to your VA.
Step #3: Organize Your Inbox
Now that your email inbox is completely decluttered and you won’t be receiving emails you no longer need, it’s time to organize your email. One of the best ways to do this is to use labels. At VA Biz Lady, we work primarily with Gmail but have also worked with other email platforms such as Outlook. Most email platforms include labels or categories you can use to keep your inbox clean and tidy. This also allows you to prioritize which emails need a response, which ones simply need to be filed, and which ones can be deleted.
You’ll want labels for archiving and storing emails and labels for emails that remain in your inbox. Labels will vary according to your particular business. Below are the email labels we recommend starting with when organizing your inbox:
Emails that need to be filed or archived – Business Receipts, Correspondence, and Client Name File (for example VA Biz Lady File).
Emails that remain in your working inbox – Take Action, Immediate Reply Needed, and FYI No Reply Needed. You can also label the Take Action emails according to who the email is assigned to. For example, Business Owner Name Take Action, VA Name Take Action, and so on.
Step #4: Delegate Email Tasks
Now that you have a clean and organized email inbox, you can begin to delegate email tasks to your virtual administrative assistant. Again, this will depend on your personal preferences. We suggest reviewing the inbox with your virtual assistant and thoroughly evaluating the tasks you wish to delegate, such as:
- How often would you like your VA to check the email inbox – once a day/twice a day/etc?
- Would you like a daily or weekly report of the email management tasks completed?
- Do you want to hand off all email management tasks, except the emails that will be labeled with YOUR NAME TAKE ACTION label?
- Which emails can the VA respond to on your behalf?
- Would it be helpful to draft specific email responses that can be sent in common situations?
Step #5: Continue to Evaluate
It may take some time, in the beginning, to work out all the tasks that need to be delegated. With email management, communication is key. For the first few weeks or months, you may want to plan on meeting over Zoom once a week to review specific questions or any email issues. The great thing about having a virtual administrative assistant help you with your business email? It’s completely up to you the tasks you delegate and the tasks you keep! As time goes on, you may wish to delegate more tasks, especially as you both become more comfortable working together.
Schedule a Free Consultation
Are you looking for a trusted virtual assistant with decades of experience to help with your email inbox management? We’d love to talk about how we can help! Schedule a free consultation with us today. For more tips on managing your email and other administrative tasks, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.