Episode Summary

The average employee spends 10 hours and 47 minutes on emails every single week! How would you like to claim back some of that time? 

In this episode, Melissa Swink discusses how a virtual assistant (VA) can help manage your inbox. She shares strategies for setting up access to your email, segmenting messages, unsubscribing from newsletters, filing non-response emails, creating templated responses, and having your VA respond on your behalf. She also provides tips for quality checks, such as daily summaries and documented procedures. Delegating inbox management can save time and allow you to focus on more important tasks in your business. 

Key Highlights:

• Delegating inbox management to a virtual assistant can save you time and allow you to focus on more important tasks.
• Segment messages by creating specific inboxes for different types of emails, such as accounting, customer service, and sales inquiries.
• Unsubscribe from email newsletters that you don't read to declutter your inbox.
• File non-response emails or informational emails in folders to keep your inbox organized.
• Create templated responses for common requests or frequently asked questions to save time in responding to emails.
• Train your VA to become an extension of you by understanding your approach and communicating on your behalf.
• Implement quality checks, such as daily summaries of inbox activity and documented procedures, to ensure smooth inbox management.
• Delegating inbox management can be a gradual process, starting with basic tasks and progressing to more customized responses.
• Handing over control of your inbox can be daunting, but it can provide relief and allow you to use your time more effectively.

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hi everyone, welcome to the Make Space for More podcast where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink, and in today's episode, we're going to have a follow -up conversation to something that I started a couple of weeks ago where I shared in episode 22 how my stance on inbox zero has changed. And in that episode, if you want to go back and listen to it, I just shared how that

topic has been a regular popular blog that's been on my website for years. It's something that I used to talk about pretty extensively with my audience and teaching my clients and why my stance on that has evolved over the years. And just a quick recap of that conversation. I think that it's really important for us to be organized in our inboxes just for the simple fact that

We have so much communication flowing to us every single day and it's important to stay organized, stay on top of things that are important and avoid overwhelm. However, I know that my role as the CEO of my company is not heavily dependent on what my inbox looks like at any given point in time. It is much more results focused in terms of the types of clients that we're bringing in, the quality of team that we're bringing in and some of those.

collaborations and initiatives and goals, those are much more important for me in my role in my company. And I believe that is the case with many of our clients and our listeners and our audience as well. So if you wanna take a listen to that episode, I did share my thoughts on email, some tips for keeping email relatively under control because I know that whenever my inbox is bursting and so many of our clients as well, when the inbox is out of control,

you also feel out of control. You need to have a handle on things. So I did share some tips for doing that in that episode. But today, I'm gonna consider today's episode as almost like a part two of that conversation. And that is how can a VA manage your inbox? Because as you continue growing and scaling your company, less and less of your time should be devoted to email.

And as I was doing some research for today's episode, I was curious, what are the current email stats that are out there? How much time are we really spending on our email? And according to an article that I came across at the New York Post, the average employee of a small business, so that would be you, even if you're a mighty team of one, you still are, quote unquote, an employee of your small business. The average employee spends 10 hours and 47 minutes per week.

drafting and sending emails. And certainly included with that would be going in and triaging and sorting and filing and all of that. So it is safe to say if you are working a standard, 40 hour, five day a week in your business, you are spending a little over two hours per day in your email. And when you think about all of the important things that you need to be doing in order to serve your clients,

you know, lead your team and grow your business. That's a lot of time. And so one of the things that I do as the owner of a virtual assistant services company and my team does for our clients is help them manage their email. Many people get to a point where they need at least some help with their email, whether that be, you know, just staying on top of things that maybe if maybe reminding them.

to respond if it's been a couple of days or something like that, just to kind of have that catch all to make sure nothing slips through the cracks or full on email management like our client wants to spend the least amount of time in their email as humanly possible and their VA is literally running 90 plus percent of what's going through their email. We have those two entry points in terms of what the client is looking for and everything in between.

But today I want to dive a little bit deeper into how you can have a VA manage your email and then that gives you a sense like if you're at that point where yes, I'm finding that I'm spending too much time in my email or I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed or it's like, do I respond to my email? Do I spend time in email or do I work with my clients or do I work on these things? Or maybe you're like, you know what? I need an assistant. I've said it a million times before. I'm going to say it again.

I need an assistant, but it's just really daunting to have somebody come in and manage your email because for so many of us, it's just so personal where we've got so many communications going through with team and clients and vendors and potential partnerships and things like that where it's daunting to think about how can I have somebody join this conversation? And you think of all the things that can go wrong with that.

What I wanted to do today is walk through a little bit of the basics in terms of how you can have a VA manage your email in terms of like setup and quality checks, but then also strategies for having them do that effectively. So starting from the very beginning, most clients will ask me, I don't even know how to get a VA involved in my inbox. Like I don't even know how to give them access. Should I do it this way? Should I do it that way? And I'll tell you that

For the most part, and certainly what I have decided to do for my executive assistant as well, is I have created an email account for her at my company, first things first. So my assistant has her own inbox, and then what I have done is I have added her as a delegate to access my email, and I have shared my calendar with her. So that way, my assistant has full access to what she needs access to.

in order to help manage my email, but she doesn't have my direct email login information, if that makes sense. There's a little bit of a security break there in terms of I can remove her access at any given point in time. God forbid, should I ever need to, I can remove access at any given point in time, and I have not given up any security or login credentials for my own inbox. And that's the way that I have found

often works best and most clients are most comfortable with. Some clients don't mind at all. They will just share, securely share their password with our team. Side note, our team uses LastPass to manage all of our clients and certainly our internal login information as well. Where we obtain that information from the client, it is shared with their VA and the VA can directly log into their email. And then we also have where clients will...

Also set up an email address for our VAs at their company and then just forward emails to them in the morning like, please tell so and so this or please follow up with so and so and tell them that and things like that. So there's a variety of ways that you can provide access to your email or share those emails with an assistant. I just wanted to give you the basics there of the options for doing something like that. So once that is set up,

here are some of the strategies that I recommend for having a VA help you manage your inbox. So first things first, reroute specific types of messages to other inboxes at your company. So especially if you are a solo business owner or you at least started that way, maybe you're actively growing and scaling with team, that is great. But I would imagine that at some given point in time, all email and all messages were coming through your inbox.

you were the accounting department, you were the customer service department, you were the sales department, and so on and so on. There's so many different types of quote unquote departments that you probably served as or maybe you're still serving as and continue to serve as. So you've got a variety of messages coming through your inbox in any given day. My recommendation as a first step was to go ahead and create some very specific types of inboxes at your company.

So to give you an example, Accounting App, and maybe that's where all of your subscription receipts go to for all the different software that you purchase in the given month. All of your vendor payments and things like that, where clients are receiving their invoices and getting their payments processed or following up on payments that are past due.

Another example would be vendors sending invoices to you, sending them to that accounting folder so that everything that is accounting related is in one place. And therefore, when you have, maybe you carve out a certain amount of time every week to do some of your accounting work. Maybe you have a bookkeeper who's doing that work. Maybe you have an assistant you would like to get help with doing some of those things. Those messages are all located in one place. And the same thing goes for like a customer service type of email.

Maybe you have a physical product that you're selling or you've got an online store or something like that where questions come in and rather than having that flow through your inbox, reroute those to a very specific folder where you can either go in and check those, you know, throughout the day as you need to, but at least they're segmented and somewhat sorted or having help from, you know, team members in responding to those.

Same thing with sales inquiries. We have a hello at email account at our company. So inquiries that come through the website and so on, those come into our hello at email where somebody is there and responding and answering questions or setting up consultations for those who are interested in how our team might be able to help them and support them, things like that. But they're all segmented like that. Maybe another example could be

If you are looking at hiring team members where you set up an email account That's like team or HR or hiring or something like that at your company and all those messages go in through there So that's the first thing that I recommend working with a VA on is kind of segmenting some of the types of messages that you're receiving and looking at doesn't make sense to create a quote -unquote department Email account for those types of things. Okay

The second one, and this is really low hanging fruit, unsubscribe from email newsletters that you don't read. Even if you wish that you had time to read them, I would say if you have not been able to read those emails in the last month or even two months, it's time to go ahead and just unsubscribe. You can always resubscribe to them in the future or if you find yourself with...

I'm saying this jokingly, extra time on your hands and you want to go back to that person's website or read their blog or something like that. You can certainly do that. But I would say there's no need to let those email newsletters pile up in your account or feel guilty about deleting them all the time. It would be better to either read those emails and be intentional about the list that you're subscribing to or just release them and let them go and declutter your inbox. The other thing that you could do is if there are certain

emails that you want to receive or maybe you do need to stay on top of industry news and things like that. Having like a to read folder created and have those emails go in there so that they're not cluttering up your inbox, but you know exactly where you need to go, say once a week or once a month and kind of scroll through and scan through and see, okay, here are the things that I need to be paying attention to. So that's the first thing, dealing with all those different lists that you're on.

as far as the actual inbox. I know the first step, we want to send emails elsewhere where we can, but when we're dealing with your inbox, first things first, unsubscribe or somehow organize things that are to read. Okay, the next step, and this is my third strategy for having a VA help you manage your inbox, is to file emails that don't need a response or are information only. So just piggybacking on that last point, let's say you receive

an email receipt from a lunch that you went to and know, Square or whatever it's, you know, those different, you know, checkout things are called. You get the idea Clover. I think there's like Clover and Square and all those sorts of things. They automatically send you emails for your receipts. Going ahead and having them, you know, file those types of things or informational types of things. So just going in the things that don't need a response.

taking a look at those and filing them where they need to go. I know for me and my team, I am often copied on things regarding client accounts, but I don't necessarily need to step in on those things. I have wonderful lead virtual assistants that work closely with our clients. I have a senior VA team that helps with client and team management. And so many times those things are being handled and moving along exactly as they should be.

I don't often need to step in and respond, but it's a good FYI for me to see what's going on with a particular client's account. Those things can be filed. Okay, my fourth strategy is to have your VA create templated responses to common requests or frequently asked questions that come in. Like sometimes, let me see if I can give you an example here. I just thought of a great one. I'll get, I love referrals from our...

clients, from our collaborators, from our vendors. And so oftentimes in my email, I will receive an email introduction like, hey, so and so I'd like you to meet Melissa. She's got this great team. I'll let the two of you connect. That sort of thing. You probably receive similar ones to your email as well. I have a templated response that I use to respond to those like, hey, so and so, thanks so much for your kind words, making this connection.

So and so, it's so nice to meet you. I'd love to connect. Here's my availability through the next week. Looking forward to it. You get the idea, but this is a template that I have been able to save based on the common way that I respond to these emails. And then that way, my assistant can, when she sees those types of emails come through, she's able to pull up and use that template, personalize it, obviously, personalize that, but she's got that guiding light of,

This is how we handle these types of emails. So we have an email template for that. And you can probably think of so many that, you know, this type of email comes in. Here's usually what I say. It would be great to share those as examples with your VA so that they can begin creating email templates for responding to those types of things. Same thing goes for maybe people who are interested in joining your team or interested in working with you or have a question about how your services work.

things that you find that you are responding to on a regular basis and you're pretty much saying the same thing every time, those are great candidates for having those templated responses available, not only at your fingertips, but also your VA's fingertips as well. Now the same thing, I would even say piggybacking on responses are also types of emails that you'd send out. Maybe there's always the same welcome email that you send to new clients who start working with you like,

Hi, great to get started on this. Here are our next steps. There are just so many emails that you and I send on a regular basis that have very little varying information, that templates are a great way to go. They're a huge time saver and ultimately making delegation much, much easier. Okay, the last strategy that I have for a VA to manage your inbox is to really...

learn how to become an extension of you and be able to respond on your behalf. Now, certainly this is something that does not happen overnight. The first four strategies that I shared are things that can get up and running fairly quickly. would say within your first month or two months of working together, a lot can be accomplished and cleaned up. But over time, you will find that there are things that

your VA is not going to be able to just file for you or use a templated response for you. And then those things are quote unquote your responsibility. And that's great for a stepping stone. Like I know for me, my first iteration of having help with my inbox, that was enough for me, for me to be able to go in every day and only see the messages that only I could respond to. That was huge as a stepping stone.

And now I'm finding that, you know, it's been about a little over a year that I've had an assistant in working in my inbox. Now it's getting to the point where we are going into like inbox 2 .0 for me personally. And I know our clients have experienced this as well and have their VA's responding on their behalf and things like that. But over time, you're going to want more impactful support in your inbox and more customized responses from your team.

So I would say the next step is for them to truly become an extension of you. And this involves really having them understand your approach and the way that you communicate with others. It requires them to have a much deeper knowledge of your company and how it works so that they are able to respond on your behalf. A stepping stone to this, and this is something that my assistant and I are working on currently right now,

is we'll use a tool called Boxer and she will send me a message and say, hey, we have an email from so -and -so. They're asking about this. Should I forward this to somebody or how do you want me to respond to this? So they're asking me very specifically. The other thing that I know has worked well for clients in the past is when they have a VA who is much more in depth in their email,

They might even have a quick 15 minute call each morning after the inbox has been filed and cleaned up and triaged and everything. And the assistant can talk through on the phone with the client, hey, here are your messages this morning. Let me read them to you. We can respond together. And that can be huge, especially if you're the type of person who's on the go and you're working with a lot of clients and you have a busy schedule. Having that quick 15, 20 minute touch base call

in the morning to get your messages responded to can be a game changer. So, know, regular check -in calls, voxer messages, like I said, that voice messaging app that we use, that's a great stepping stone for your VA to be able to respond to things on your behalf and you're giving very specific direction. And this is a relationship that just continues to grow and evolve over time. So those are my top five strategies. But before ...

I wrap up this episode just wanted to mention to you a couple of quality checks that I have found have been really, really helpful for our team and our clients over the years. First thing is a daily summary. So if you have somebody in your inbox, and maybe this isn't something that needs to go on forever, but especially in the first several months of working together, having them send you a quick summary of like, hey, here's what was in your inbox this morning.

Here's what I filed. Here's what I responded to. Like this inquiry came in or this question came in. I sent them this and there's these emails that you need to respond to. There's one from so -and -so and one from so -and -so. And just giving you that quick daily summary so you know what came in and where all those emails went so you're not having that panic of like, wait, am I missing something? Was there something important that came in?

So having that daily summary can be really, really helpful. The other thing that I would say, and this is important for not only just email, but so many of the regular tasks that you're doing on a day -to -day basis and an ongoing basis in your business is to have documented procedures. And so as you are beginning to cross -train your VA on your inbox, have them start a document of when this type of email comes in, here's what we do with it.

When that type of inquiry comes in, here's how we respond to it. And then that way you've got a standard operating procedure on how to manage your inbox. And that way, when there's ever any confusion of, well, this came in and this is what I did, then you're able to go back and review that process and make tweaks as necessary. This is also really important in case...

your VA is suddenly unavailable, where maybe your VA simply goes on vacation and enjoys some time off with their family, which is fantastic. We love that. Or God forbid life happens and that person suddenly needs to take a step back from the work that they're doing with you. That way you have this document of the procedures of here's how to manage my inbox so that you're able to get a backup person or in our team in the case, shameless plug here. We provide backups for our clients.

so that they aren't without support. We have backups who can then jump in, refer back to that procedure in that document and be able to manage the inbox during the absence of the main primary VA, if that makes sense. So having those procedures is huge. Okay, thank you so much for taking the time to listen to today's episode. I hope this gives you some information or even sparks some ideas on how you can streamline your inbox now and also look at

the different phases and stages that you can begin to step into to get some help with your inbox. So if you know a business owner who has a full plate, which spoiler alert, we all have a full plate and we all are dealing with email overload and things like that in today's world, or if you know somebody who said, I just need an assistant, would you please share this episode with them? Because I think that handing over control to an inbox can seem like a really daunting step in terms of delegation.

But there are phases to do this. There are checkpoints and security related to being able to do this in a way that is reassuring on all parties' sides of things. But honestly, once you get some relief in terms of the inbox and the email, and you're able to take those, two hours a day and slash them into a half or even less than a quarter of what you're spending right now, those results can

provide dividends in terms of you reaching your goals and using your time more effectively. So I hope that this was helpful for you. Thank you so much again for listening today. I will be back next week with more practical tips and tools and strategies to grow and scale your business beyond you. Have a wonderful day and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye everyone.