If you are a founder or part of a growing business, you are probably already finding email management hard! The number of emails you receive will only increase and sorting, prioritizing, responding, and completing other inbox-related tasks will become even more time-consuming. All of this will ultimately reduce your productivity, and delay other important activities you need to get done.
One way of reducing how much of your time and energy this takes up is to use tools like Superhuman or Rightinbox - and you’ll see that they have their place! However, they won’t be able to do a lot of the heavy lifting for your inbox.
You should consider hiring someone remotely to manage the chaos of an unkempt inbox!
Email management virtual assistants (EVAs) can efficiently handle and declutter your inbox, filter and sort emails by priority, use tools that make management easier, and do many more tasks!
In this blog, we will review 20+ tasks an email management virtual assistant can do to increase efficiency and productivity for you and your business.
- Inbox management: An EVA can sort and categorize emails based on their urgency, importance, and time sensitivity, depending on your needs. They can create different folders to send emails into so that you can access them easily. For example, an EVA can sort emails from investors or stakeholders into a high-priority folder, inquiries from clients into a different, but equally important, folder for easy access, and routine business inquiry emails into another folder. They can also redirect spam and archive and delete emails no longer relevant to the business.
- Draft and send emails: This task has a broad scope, and you can decide what responsibilities your EVA should have. EVAs can draft and send emails that relate to responding to customers who write in asking about the specifications of a particular product and its availability, write follow-up emails after in-person client or sales meetings, draft introductory emails to establish new business connections, and more.
- Filter spam and junk mail: EVAs can filter and stop spam by enabling filters that do not let unwanted emails reach your inbox, blacklisting email IDs that are known spam senders, and setting up sender authentication protocols like SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) to authenticate incoming messages.
- Schedule appointments: An EVA can coordinate with clients who want to meet with you by confirming receipt of their request, providing availability options and preferred timeslots, and sending confirmation and reminder emails once the appointment date draws nearer. They can also reschedule appointments in case either party cannot be there. Streamlining this process reduces back-and-forth communication, making client appointments more convenient.
- Responding to routine inquiries: Personally responding to commonly asked questions can be time-consuming and distract you from other important tasks. If you hire an EVA, they can draft and automate standard responses to FAQs (for example, on shipping time for a product), give customers and clients comprehensive information on a product or service your company offers, provide technical support, assist with subscription options, give order status updates, and much more.
- Flag urgent emails: EVAs can make sure that you do not miss critical messages. They can do this by color-coding emails (extremely important can be red), automating emails from certain clients and stakeholders to be flagged as a priority, modifying subject lines as “URGENT” so you do not miss them, and setting up filters that catch emails with words like “emergency” and boost them to the top of your inbox. EVAs can also mark emails based on time sensitivity, adding indicators like “due today” or “respond by EOD,” integrate messaging tools like Slack to alert when important emails are received, create weekly/monthly reports highlighting how many urgent emails were received and the corresponding response time, and suggest ways to improve.
- Email tracking and analytics: An EVA can help track and visualize email communications and provide insights. They do this by analyzing email click-through rates, conversion rates from email campaigns, bounce rates, unsubscribe rates, and engagement time, among other metrics. EVAs would pay special attention to which email subject lines work, what call-to-actions are effective, and what content works best with different audiences to better construct future campaigns. Further, EVAs can use tools like timetoreply to track metrics and see if a client receives relevant information.
- Email list management: An EVA can maintain an email list of clients based on geography, purchase frequency, demographics, and other criteria that help you determine which product can be marketed to a particular group. EVAs also keep lists up-to-date by adding new subscribers, removing inactive ones, and deleting duplicate addresses.
- Email filing and archiving: EVAs can create a folder structure based on project, client, and kind of email (inquiry, invoice, appointment, etc) that makes it easier to access information as and when required. EVAs can create email tags and labels to make this process even smoother, and set up keywords that, once identified, can reroute incoming emails directly into a designated folder.
- Email automation to streamline repetitive tasks: Email automation can include welcome emails for new subscribers, out-of-office replies, purchase confirmations, “item-left-in-your-cart” emails, and other messaging as per the needs of your business. EVAs can also execute drip campaigns that send automated emails at pre-specified time intervals (for example, a new subscriber can receive a welcome email followed by another in a few days that recommends a list of bestselling products), send messages on subscribers’ birthdays with exclusive offers, and more.
- Research: An EVA can find and present a variety of information based on your needs. This can include market research to know more about industry trends and competitor strategies and market share, produce research that includes material, pricing, sales strategies, and target demographic, and keyword research, which includes finding information for SEO optimization to make your website and email marketing content more visible.
- Customer relationship management (CRM): Effective CRM is essential to maintaining good relations with your customers. EVAs can help by sending follow-up emails after a purchase or meeting to receive feedback, sending thank-you emails, creating campaigns for existing customers that include exclusive deals and promotions, managing customer complaints promptly, and inviting them to join referral programs, among other tasks. This can ensure customers are satisfied, leading to positive reviews that help grow your business.
- Generating leads: EVAs can help build leads by sourcing information from website directories, social media websites, etc. They can send cold emails to introduce your business, embark on email campaigns that include personalized emails to introduce products and services to potential clients, and even send follow-up emails to build and maintain relationships with new leads.
- Email template design: EVAs with HTML coding experience and a sound understanding of software like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator can design custom email templates that make your brand distinct and easily recognizable. These are useful for marketing campaigns and are customizable for different devices. For example, they could design a template for a summer sale or a series of webinars your company is organizing.
- Data entry: A good EVA can sift through multiple emails, extract important data, and input this information into spreadsheets, databases, and other internal software the business uses. Data could include expenses, contact details, project updates, inquiries, etc., helping your company make informed decisions with correct information.
- Email training and onboarding: An EVA can help onboard new hires by familiarizing them with the different software and processes and company uses. These can include marketing tools like HubSpot, MailChimp, GetResponse, Brevo, and others that are commonly used to create mailing lists, design templates, and automate marketing campaigns. EVAs can also guide new recruits through established best practices on sorting, filtering, and organizing email inboxes, email etiquette, and in-house email styles to maintain polite communication.
- Email translation: If your company operates in multiple time zones and different geographies, you likely receive (and need to send) emails in multiple languages. Hiring an EVA for translation services can ensure that no important details are miscommunicated Free online translation services often misinterpret sentences and the sentiment being conveyed.
- Email crisis management: EVAs can leverage email marketing tools as a means to communicate with employees, clients, and stakeholders instantly and directly. For example, in case of a defective product, EVAs can send emails to customers with the steps they need to take to be safe. They can even use data to personalize messages based on their interests. Metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates can also tell EVAs who are reading emails during the crisis time and can help you make decisions about future correspondence with this segment.
- Email policy development: An EVA can help create policies and guidelines for email usage that cover content, security, confidentiality, branding, and language. Once hired, an EVA will research industry best practices and analyze your business’s needs to draft a policy document. They can also create material such as presentations and handbooks to educate and train employees about email policy and, once approved, help implement it.
- Adopt and set up new tools and technologies: EVAs can help optimize your Gmail or Outlook inbox by using advanced search functions to quickly find information, customizing notifications for high-priority messages, and integrating third-party applications. CRM systems like Salesforce and Pipedrive can be integrated to track opens, clicks, and response rates; tracking tools such as Bananatag, Yesware, or Boomerang can be used to set up reminders and follow-up tasks; and Todoist, Asana, and Trello can be used for task management.
Hire a 1% virtual assistant
Founded by serial entrepreneurs, Leverage Assistants is a white-glove service that helps you find 1% assistants and then teaches you how to build leverage with them. If you're interested in a strategy session to learn how to use an assistant, click here.
