And why not? We use emails to do just about everything. We receive spam emails and try to keep them from distracting us. We use emails to schedule Zoom meetings. We use emails to get together with friends. We use emails to send ourselves reminders. We send emails to generate leads and sales with our business.
Email is not only an integral part of how we live our lives, but it’s a vital way to communicate. The convenience of sending an email that is instantaneously transported to the recipient’s inbox is something that many businesses couldn’t live without.
But the question isn’t whether email is important. The question is how to get control over it.
While email doubtlessly makes our lives easier, it can also get in the way. Some people spend as much as half their day with email-checking related distractions. And when you keep an email client open on your computer all day long, you give people the power to distract you from essential work with the click of a button.
If you want to take charge of your inbox, it will require more than willpower. We recommend hiring an email virtual assistant who can not only help with email management, but help empower you as a business owner.
Don’t be beholden to your email account or email inbox anymore. Take control over every aspect of your online life by having an email virtual assistant teach you how to get to inbox zero.
Need some help? Here’s everything you’ll need to know.
What Life Can Look Like with an Email Virtual Assistant
First things first: a definition. What is an email virtual assistant? They’re someone who can help you handle email management by stepping in to help with follow-ups, email organization, and scheduling. In essence, they’re someone to whom you can delegate your most difficult email tasks so you’re not constantly wrestling with what to do at the end of the day.
But let’s break it up into smaller pieces. Here are some of the things an email virtual assistant can do:
Leveraging your email account. Let’s say that you primarily work through a Gmail account, for example. What are the plugins and apps that can help you organize and automate your email life as much as possible? An email virtual assistant will have the know-how to keep you on top of things.
Follow up management. For many business owners, following up with potential leads is vital, but time-consuming work. An email virtual assistant can step in and make sure that every lead is kept in the loop. They’ll also help you sort your important emails so you can focus your spare time to doing the most vital work first.
Inbox management. Ever look at your email inbox at the end of the day and wonder how it could have gotten so large? It’s something that creeps up on all of us. A skilled virtual assistant can not only help you with inbox management, but can organize the most important emails for you so you only have to review the essentials.
Email know how. Simply put, many of us aren’t that good at using our emails. Sure, we think we are. But when it comes down to following up, scheduling our calendar, or integrating a management system, how often do we actually sit down and do it? Chances are, email organization has been on your “to-do” list for quite a while now. Are you any further along? If not, it might be time to outsource to a freelancer or email virtual assistant.
Don’t forget that there are other benefits to working with a virtual assistant as well. Hiring a virtual assistant might help you save up to around 80% in operating costs, for example. This isn’t only because you’re hiring someone on an hourly rate. It also means that you don’t need to create all of the associated costs of a full-time hire.
When you take on a full-time hire, think about all of the ancillary expenses: benefits, added office space, creating a workstation for them to use. If you don’t have a computer for them to use at work, that’s another thousand dollars or more. With a virtual assistant, you can let them work from home while you get started.
How to Use Email Better with an Email Virtual Assistant
The idea of hiring an email virtual assistant just to manage your email might sound like overkill to you. But keep in mind that many business owners run their lives through email. How much easier would your life be if you finally got inbox management under control?
Have you ever considered that your email inbox is capable of much more than being a list of things you have to do?
To demonstrate that, let’s look at some of the tools you might integrate along with an email virtual assistant—and how they can improve your life.
SalesHandy. Here’s a great example of what email can do when you leverage software. With software like SalesHandy, you can incorporate either Outlook or Gmail to automate and track your email outreach. Heck, you can even schedule emails to send out at the appropriate time. That way, you might send a sales email at 6 p.m. and have it show up at a more sales-optimized time like 10 a.m.
SaneBox. Want your email inbox to be more “sane”? This AI-for-email tool can incorporate a “Do Not Disturb” feature so you can be more productive and shut out outside distractions without losing touch of what’s going on in your inbox. This is ideal for anyone who realizes that the average distraction costs about 25 minutes of recovery time. If you interrupt that pattern before it happens, you’ll save yourself hours every day.
Thunderbird. What if your email inbox was more intuitive, like the way you might browse on the Internet? That’s what Thunderbird does, bringing your inbox into a “tabbed” version of events. That means you can manage your emails much like you browse the web—and when you’re done, you can simply close out the client and go about your day.
Boomerang. Want to snooze messages? Alter the timing of when your emails are sent? Include a quick readability check when you send out emails, so you’re sending out instructions and sales pitches that are clear and straightforward? Boomerang is one of the most popular applications for dealing with email and expanding your productive capacity.
Of course, there are plenty of email solutions that will help you expand how many emails you can send out, or add other touches like more personalization to your sales emails.
But we recognize that this can sound like a lot of work. Who has time to vet all of these apps, install them on your smartphone or computer, and then learn how to use all the features? Certainly not you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this in the first place.
However, consider everything that your email virtual assistant can do for you once they integrate the right tools for your specific needs:
Identifying follow-ups
Scheduling emails to send at the proper time
Arrange emails into a new, intuitive interface
Create a “do not disturb” feature so you can enhance productivity
If all of this sounds like something you’d want to do to get your email in line, then you need to consider hiring an email virtual assistant to help you out.
How to Get Started with Delegated Today
Are you interested in getting started? We’ve broken the process up into a few easy steps:
Sign up! That’s it—just get your toes into the water and see what it’s like on the other end when you sign up with Delegated. No major commitments necessary.
Work with our customer success manager. We realize that it can be tough trying this out on your own for the first time, so we’ll assign someone to get in touch and help you with the process.
Select a virtual assistant. Hopefully, you’ll have a list of at least two or three needs for upgrading your email management system. You can use this list to identify the candidates with the best background for your email needs.
Hire and onboard! Hiring is just one step of the process. But the real productivity begins when you onboard a new virtual assistant into your systems and allow them the freedom to start making changes.
Start growing your business and reducing overhead with Delegated
1. Meet your assistant
We’ll ask you some questions to match you with one our virtual assistants as well as a backup assistant.
2. Create a workflow
Our platform gives you the power to create a workflow that fits your lifestyle. You choose how to track time, communicate, and share files with your assistant.
3. Start delegating
You have access to your virtual assistant 8am-5pm your local time. Start delegating tasks and grow as you need.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Email Virtual Assistants
Let’s answer some of the most popular questions that come up when talking about getting your email inbox under control:
What is an “email” virtual assistant? Are they different from a regular virtual assistant?
It’s simply a change in title that reflects the skills and experience of a virtual assistant who knows how to handle email. However, you will find that there is a marked difference between a VA who has this kind of experience, and your average VA who is only used to simple, administrative work. A virtual assistant with specific experience in email strategy and applications can help you leverage your time much more than an ordinary VA, even if they both can provide value through delegating your tasks.
Why can’t I integrate some solutions myself?
It’s true: there are a lot of great ways that you can incorporate different email applications into your life without the use of a virtual assistant or a freelancer. But have you ever considered how much time and effort it takes to integrate these various solutions into your life? You’d be surprised. And when there’s that much work ahead of you, it’s easy to put it off…and put it off…and put it off…until your email solutions haven’t “solved” anything.
What kinds of skills should I look for in an email virtual assistant?
That will depend on what you need. If you really need to ramp up your sales outreach efforts, you’ll want an email virtual assistant who has a lot of experience with automation and outreach. Let them teach you how to email fresh leads and schedule follow ups in the most efficient, minimally-distracting way possible.
I’m just a small business owner. Isn’t hiring an assistant a bit much?
In fact, it’s ideal for the small business owner. If you run a large company, you might hire someone full-time. But that can mean paying benefits, a large salary, and not getting the kind of efficiency you might otherwise get from an hourly worker. However, if you’re a small business owner, you don’t have the kind of budget where you can ignore these issues.
In that case, hiring someone through virtual assistant services can be a great way to keep within a budget while also experiencing the benefits of what may feel like a full-time assistant. It’s win-win.
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