Most business owners are overwhelmed by the number of emails they receive on a daily basis and could use help organizing and managing their inboxes.
In today's episode, I cover what's involved in creating an email management service. Whether you're a new VA or have been around for a while, email management can be a great service to offer clients.
Mentioned in the episode:
- Get Your Emails Organized course
- Create an Email Management Service course
Find both courses inside the Introvert VA Club>> https://introvertvaclub.com
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Virtual Assistant Service Idea: Email Management
There are tons of service ideas to choose from when you become a Virtual Assistant. One of them is helping clients organize and maintain their email inboxes.
Business owners get tons of emails, and it is overwhelming to them. If you enjoy organizing, perhaps you’d like to help clients reach inbox zero and offer email management as a service!
Hello! Welcome to the Desire to Done Podcast for Virtual Assistants! I’m your host, Billie Gardner.
In today’s episode, I’m taking you behind the scenes of what’s involved with helping clients with their emails.
Email Management includes organizing emails, setting up systems for incoming emails, training the client how to manage their emails, and maybe even replying to emails on behalf of the client.
You can create a one-and-done service where you clean things up, and then the client manages their inbox themselves, or it could be an ongoing service where you maintain a clean inbox for a monthly retainer fee.
So, what’s the process? How do you help clients clear out their inboxes?
- Create labels. Labels are what Gmail uses to organize emails, and they’re similar to folders. You’ll need to create labels based on what the client has in their inbox. For example, you could create a label called “financials” and a sub-folder called “Income” and another called “Expenses.” You’ll also want to create a label for the client and put all emails you need them to look at there. That way, they aren’t going into the inbox where you’re working.
- Unsubscribe from emails the client doesn’t want. When you sign for or purchase a product, you’ll often get lots of emails from that company that just pile up in the inbox. Unsubscribing is one way to get them to stop coming in.
- Set up filters. Filters will help automate the process of clearing out the inbox. You can create filters for many different tasks, but one you might want to set up is for certain emails to skip the inbox and go directly to a label. That way, the email never appears in the inbox again, helping it stay clear, but is tucked away under the proper label so the client can read it later.
- Batch archive. Batch archiving is the act of clearing out multiple emails in the inbox at once. You do this by searching an email address, selecting all the filtered emails, and clicking “archive.” Emails going to the archive folder will be there forever, unlike delete. That way, your client can search and find an email if they need to.
- Create email templates. Templates make responding to common questions easy. You can create templates for yourself if you’ll be answering emails for the client, or you can make them for your client.
- Maintain new emails coming in. While you’re clearing out old emails, you’ll also need to clear out new emails. The good news is you’ll likely have fewer emails coming in because you’ve unsubscribed and set up filters.
- Train your client on how to manage their emails. You’ll need to tell the client where they can find their emails and let them know they need to clear out their label daily. You don’t want them keeping emails there. They need to archive, delete, respond and archive, or put the task in their project management software if the email requires action and then archive the email.
Clients can definitely benefit from an email management service. They’ll feel less stressed and overwhelmed when checking their emails and can stay on top of important emails and tasks. It’s a great service to offer clients and something new VAs can easily do because it doesn’t require a skillset that takes time to develop.
If you’re interested in managing emails for clients, you’re in luck! I have two courses inside my membership that can help you.
One is called Get Your Emails Organized, which goes through the clean-up process I went through today in more detail. The other one is called Create an Email Management Service, which goes through setting up the client processes for your service.
Just go to introvertvaclub.com to sign up, and you’ll have access to both of these courses and all the other trainings included. Plus, support from me and other VAs in our community.
That’s it for today! I hope you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you! I’ll talk to you soon! Bye!
