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This article could just as easily have been
named... TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A JUNK-MAIL JUNKIE!
When you're just starting out in your marketing
business and you're getting 10 to 15 e-mails a day, then
spending the few minutes it takes to read and sort the
mail is kinda fun... like hugging a teddy bear. But once
you get going, your inbox may be loaded with several
hundred e-mail MONSTERS a day.
Granted, most will be junk e-mail. But suddenly,
instead of 15 to 20 minutes a day... you spend several
hours sorting and looking for the REAL mail. All of a
sudden, this cute little teddy bear is eating big chunks
of your time... he's still just a cub, but he's getting
bigger every day.
There
are some good techniques that will help
you tame your "in-coming" e-mail Monster:
1. Tame
him while he's still a friendly little cub
Because your business
absolutely depends on e-mail, structure your e-mail
management system so that it can handle hundreds of
e-mails a day... just as effortlessly as handling a few.
2. Deal
with the mail once a day
Set aside a SPECIFIED period
of time each day to process your e-mail... then stick to
your schedule.
3. Assign
a priority to the different e-mail tasks you must
perform everyday
First - answer personal
letters... Second - process incoming inquiries... Third
- read appropriate ezine articles... and Fourth - scan
and dump the junk mail.
4. Use
filters, coupled with folders, to automatically sort
your mail for you
Most of your distractions
and interruptions will come in the form of e-mail. So,
your first line of defense should be to find a good
e-mail program... Explorer's Outlook Express, and
Netscape's Messenger can all be set up to AUTOMATICALLY
sort your mail for you. They can even be set up to
identify and delete incoming spam. Ain't technology
wunnerful!!! Set up SPECIFIC folders for SPECIFIC mail
categories and then set up 'filters' to
automatically direct incoming e-mail into the
appropriate folders.
5. Create
a directory of e-mail boxes and folders
Another secret for taming
the e-mail Monster is to set up separate e-mail
addresses for the different functions you perform. You
simply create specific boxes to receive specific
incoming mail. For example, if you're running your
business by yourself, you might create a series of
aliases for each of the hats you wear...such as: sales@yourdomain.com
OR support@yourdomain.com OR subscribe@yourdomain.com.
These
next 3 tips will help you tame
the "outgoing" e-mail Monster:
6. Harness
the amazing power of autoresponders
Set up autoresponders for
every function that doesn't require personal
correspondence. You can set them up to send salesletters
back to those who have responded to your ads. You can
use them to automate your customer service by setting up
a series of "Reply" letters, each dealing with
a specific question concerning your business. Once you
start thinking about it, the possibilities are endless!
7. Learn
to take advantage of the power of announcement lists
Let's say that you are
constantly posting new information to your training
website, and you want to keep your customers up to date
on the changes. You could spend hours sending individual
e-mails to all 3 zillion of them...or you could spend 5
minutes composing and sending ONE message to the list
that all 3 zillion of them are on. The announcement list
is how you do so.
8. The
last in your arsenal of Monster-taming secrets is to
create and use "boilerplates"
What's a
"boilerplate"? It's that personalized form
letter that your attorney charged you $150 to write. But
that he didn't actually write... while you weren't
looking, he had his secretary pull a STANDARDIZED form
letter out of his boilerplate files... and had her
personalize it for YOU. It probably didn't take her as
long to personalize it as it did for her to write the
bill for the $150 that he charged you to
"write" the letter.
You've probably already
realized that 90 percent of the questions you answer are
the same ones over and over again. The only difference
will be some minor detail. Why not create ONE really
good letter dealing with each question or subject.
Then... just pull it out of the boilerplate file... copy
it... paste it into a "compose" window...
personalize it to the person you're sending it to... hit
the send button and you're finished in 5 minutes instead
of 45!
These 8 strategies all
require an investment of time to set them up. But if
you'll make the investment, then your email will always
be a well behaved teddy bear, instead of a giant out of
control MONSTER!
Article by Gary White
of howtoguides™
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