For businesses, email is still the go-to for communication. However, managing emails has become a significant challenge.
For example, a real estate business owner has hundreds of emails arriving daily, and inbox management takes up valuable time.
Hiring an email management virtual assistant is the way forward, allowing you to save time and remain focused on important clients.
Having the correct email virtual assistant on board can drastically improve the time you dedicate to critical tasks, which boosts growth.
Let’s examine further the benefits of hiring email virtual assistants.
Why Should You Hire Someone To Manage Your Inbox?
The main advantage of hiring an email management virtual assistant is that you don’t have to worry about dedicating time and effort to organising your email inbox; your virtual assistant does it all for you.
A virtual email assistant will handle basic email management tasks such as creating filters, and filing and prioritising emails into folders to ensure you don’t miss important emails.
Excellent email management also requires your virtual assistant to set up email notifications that alert you when you, the business owner, receive a new email. Your virtual assistant will decide which emails warrant your attention.
With your inbox organised in a timely manner across all email accounts, it allows you to manage the rest of your working day effectively.
How Can A Virtual Assistant Help?
Here are the top-four areas where an email management virtual assistant can help your business.
1 – Use of Email Management Tools
When you hire an email virtual assistant, they must be able to use email management tools effectively.
Excellent knowledge of how to get the best out of inbox management tools will help your business run smoothly.
Many business owners need more time to get to grips with email management tools. Hiring a virtual assistant who can keep your inbox organised by using tools to help with a time-consuming task can only be an advantage to your company.
Free email management system tools are popular, with many businesses taking advantage. Tools such as Direct Mail, Gmail, MailerLite and Goggle Workspace are essential to helping you manage your email inbox.
We will go into these tools in detail shortly.
2 – Achieve Faster Follow-up Times
Your email management virtual assistant is responsible for alerting you to any follow-up emails you need to make.
Sometimes your expert skill and knowledge are required in response to an email you have received. However, most of the time, your virtual assistant can reply promptly to general email inquiries.
Being up to date with your follow-ups is vital, as failing to do so will reflect poorly on your company and will prove costly in the long term.
3 – Arrive To An Organised Inbox
The first task is ensuring you have an organised email inbox, which is essential to achieving a smooth and productive working day.
Your virtual assistant must treat checking for unread emails as one of the most essential tasks of the day. Imagine the hassle it would cause if you missed a vital email because your virtual assistant failed to manage your customer queries via email effectively.
Your business email account must always be tidy, up-to-date and free of unwanted old emails or sent to the appropriate folder.
Many administrative tasks can seem pointless, but having an overflowing inbox can lead to catastrophic harm to your company.
4 – Manage Smart Folders
To effectively manage your email inbox, your virtual assistant must create parent categories by using an intelligent folder within the inbox.
When smart folders are created and managed correctly, it allows easy access to priority emails. This method is advantageous when you are working on a long-term project and need to access the same folder quickly and frequently.
Using smart folders can improve internal communication within your company and is vital when dealing with travel arrangements for staff from your own business.
It is also vital to flag emails which are of high importance to ensure they go straight to the top of your inbox.
Priority Email Management Services
Here are six email management tips you need to implement.
1 – Prioritise Your Inbox
Your email assistant must always prioritise your inbox correctly.
All clients will believe they are your number one priority, but in reality, it’s the clients that generate the most money for your business who get the special treatment.
Your email virtual assistant must ensure they reply promptly to all clients, but the top-dollar clients come first.
Setting a level of importance to each email is a vital way to ensure your virtual assistant doesn’t mistakenly neglect urgent emails that require immediate attention.
2 – Create Folders And Filters
When you are creating labels, folders and filters, it will make your email inbox far more organised. How your inbox is organised makes it easier for your email assistant to retrieve relevant correspondents quickly.
It is vital that you create different folders for each email priority category. This ensures essential and confidential emails aren’t lost in your junk box.
Creating labels also lets your virtual assistant quickly and effectively know which essential messages are prioritised when responding to emails.
Incoming emails can be automatically delivered to their designated folder when sent by a particular client by the sender’s email address or have specific keywords in the subject line.
When you create filters, it guards against unwanted emails being sent to your primary inbox, and they automatically go to your spam folder.
3 – Set Up Notifications
You don’t want to miss important messages, so always make sure you set up notifications as part of your email organisation strategy.
Missing a vital project deadline because you didn’t see the email is just bad management on the part of your email virtual assistant.
Often businesses receive emails that require an instant response. Imagine missing an email from an important client asking to reschedule their appointment – this will reflect poorly on your company.
You can also have your emails synced to your mobile phone or any other device to ensure you see them when you are out of the office.
4 – Create Templates
Creating email templates saves you valuable time and lets you quickly reply to email queries throughout the working day.
You will be surprised how much time is wasted replying to emails. Having a templated email response shows the sender you have seen their email and will respond in more detail within
However, clients can take offence at auto responders if they feel their query is urgent, so it is vital to respond to their email within the timeframe you have specified.
5 – Apply Colour Coding
Colour-coding your emails in priority is an excellent way to organise your inbox.
Using this colour coding method lets your virtual assistant quickly see which email needs their attention next throughout the day.
Not responding promptly to an essential client regarding an update on a unique project you are collaborating on will lead to a lack of confidence regarding the project from the client.
Visually seeing important emails clearly through colour-coding lets your virtual assistant perform vital work quickly and effectively.
6 – Remove Spam And Newsletters
All businesses are inundated with unwanted promotional emails which land in their inbox.
The most effective way to deal with this is to set up a filtering system for all those unwanted spam email messages to go directly to a designated folder or junk box.
Sometimes the emails a company receives can be company newsletters which need to be automatically archived to be read at a later date when you have a spare five minutes.
Endless spam emails should never have a place in your inbox and should always be binned.
Let Us Help You Find The Ideal VA
As you have read, when you hire a virtual assistant for email management, it proves cost-effective and allows your business the chance to grow.
However, business owners are often too busy to find the correct email management virtual assistant, so they prefer an email management services company to look after the process for them.
Call us today for a free consultation. Our company can source, interview, hire and manage your email virtual assistant for you.
You will be surprised how quickly we can get you up and running with a virtual assistant that suits your company’s needs.