Handling Overwhelming Email

Every business has to deal with the administrative side of their enterprise. If you have a business website, people will use your business email address to contact you for any number of needs. Each day you will see your inbox grow exponentially as more people discover your business. The trick will be to get all of those emails addressed without pulling your hair out.

I used to love it when my AOL chimed, “You’ve got mail.” It meant that someone wanted to contact me. With a business, however, email can seem like the enemy. I closed my eyes when I hit INBOX because I was afraid of how many new messages I had to look forward to.

Getting emails from customers, potential clients, and the like is a major part of your business. Don’t be afraid of it. But, it can be overwhelming when there are other issues to deal with, like marketing your business to others. So, let’s look at some ways to lessen the pressure.

Decide when you will check your email. Some may think that this is a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many people check their email when they get a free moment. This could add up to about ten times a day. No one has time for that if they are actively working their business. There are other things that need to be tended to.

Check your email at set times. At most, check it three times a day. It goes without saying that if you are in an active correspondence with someone that you will have to check it more often, but on a normal day, email can be checked in the morning before you begin your day, in the afternoon, and in the evening before you close up shop.

When setting up your email, use a separate account for business. Using your personal email is a lot like using your home telephone number for business. You can miss messages or accidentally delete ones that you think are SPAM. A personal email account is set up to filter differently than a business email account would be.

Email providers offer more features than we normally use. Mostly, we use the features that we are familiar with when we set up the account. If your email is getting out of control, explore these other features to see if they can help. Microsoft Outlook has many features that are perfect for handling business email. Emails can be flagged to view later and they can be filed in folders that you set up so that you can deal with similar issues all at once.

Create templates that can be used to answer emails. If you just don’t have the time to deal with customer service issues at the moment, having an automatic email template that can be sent out will save you from having to write a new email for each customer service one you receive.

Email doesn’t have to be the terror of your day. Organize your emails by using the various features offered by your email account provider to make the job easier.

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