How You Can Outsource Your Email Inbox to a Virtual Assistant

How many emails do you have in your inbox? 10? 100? 10,280 of unread emails? It becomes nearly impossible sometimes to effectively manage your email inbox. Whether you’re on the hunt to find an important email that has gotten lost amongst the rest, have missed a deadline or vital information because you missed an email or decided to reply later, but had completely forgotten… email management is such a time waster and a hassle to keep up to date.

It might be time to get some extra help. By hiring a Virtual Assistant, you could save around 12 hours a week, by letting them take over your whole email inbox so that you can focus on growing your business and only be notified if the important matters.

How Virtual Assistants Can Manage Your Inbox

It’s so easy to become a victim of an utterly disorganised disaster in your email inbox. Here’s how our Virtual Assistants can help you sort through the mess and create a more effective email management system that’s right for you.

P.S If you want a step-by-step breakdown of how to outsource your inbox to a Virtual Assistant, download our FREE eBook: Ultimate Guide to Outsourcing Your Email & Calendar to a VA.

Executive Virtual Assistant

An Executive Virtual Assistant has the same qualities you would expect from an in-office Personal Assistant. These qualities include:

• Having the knowledge and expertise in basic administration tasks
• Organised
• Tech-savvy
• Proficient in verbal and written communication
• Friendly
• Will treat your business like it’s their own

These are all the qualities we look for when we shortlist Executive Virtual Assistants from our talent pool to fill your Email Manager position.

Day-to-day Email Management Tasks

When discussing the Executive Virtual Assistant role with potential candidates, it’s important that we clearly communicate the day-to-day responsibilities in the role. These are the basic Email Management Tasks that we recommend you add to the Job Description:

• Declutter your Inbox: Your Virtual Assistant can clean up your email inbox by categorising your emails into folders, based on project names or different departments (e.g Finance, Marketing, New Leads, Inquiries, Personal) and add relevant tags (e.g Urgent, Approval Required etc)
• Manage your spam: Any spam email subscriptions that you’re no longer interested, your Virtual Assistant can remove and unsubscribe. It’s also important for your Virtual Assistant to regularly check your Spam to ensure that no important emails have been accidentally filtered through.
• Add Email Filters: An Executive Virtual Assistant can add email filters, mark urgent emails, flag all spam emails.
• Responding to Emails: Just like a personal assistant, your Virtual Assistant can respond to relevant emails in a timely manner. Whether you would like them to notify you of important emails, send replies as themselves or respond on your behalf, is up to you. Just give them clear instructions on what you would like them to do.
• Manage Calendar Invitations: All your meetings with clients can be managed by your Executive Virtual Assistant. They can create and send calendar invitations to book in your meetings and send follow up emails once the meeting is over.

Assigning Email Management Tasks to your Virtual Assistant

Here are the five basic steps you can follow if you want to jump straight into assigning email management tasks to your VA (however, we highly recommend to download our FREE guide for specific steps and tips on finding the best VA for the job)

1.Give Access to your Email

The first step to working with your Virtual Assistant to manage your email inbox is to give them access to your email. If you’re worried about sharing your private details and passwords, utilise platforms such as Outlook and Gmail, which allows third party access to your email accounts. Your VA will be invited to join, however, you may revoke their access at any time, without having to change your password.

2. Start with Non Vital Work

Before assigning your Virtual Assistant with the important role of responding to emails, give them other non essential tasks, such as cleaning up your email inbox or categorising your emails into folders. This will establish a positive working arrangement and help build trust.

3.Guide Them Through the Tasks

An important component of working with any employee, is to establish general rules and provide guidance to help them achieve exactly what you’re looking for. Assist your Virtual Assistant by letting them know which emails they should reply to, forward on to you, delete or archive and which ones they should star or highlight. If there were any tasks you were unsure of, they can type it up for you to check and approve before they click the send button.

4.Create Email Templates

To help ensure a smooth process, it would be highly beneficial to create scripts that your Virtual Assistant can use to craft your emails. Make an email template to the most frequently asked questions, so your VA will be equipped and ready to respond.

5.Custom Emails

In order to respond to any emails that are custom and require your input, send a voice message to your Virtual Assistant and they can type up the response in your exact words to send to the recipient.

Empower your Virtual Assistants to become Independent Thinkers

Owner of Outsourcing Angel, Linh Podetti, highlights that in order to really succeed in business, it is important to build a trusted and reliable team, who have the confidence to make independent decisions, as you would. However, to get to the end goal, the initial stage of hiring a Virtual Assistant, as it would for any new employee, does require some hand holding. But, trust us… it will be so worth it in the end.

1. Show them your email inbox: The first step is to start by showing them the current state of your email inbox and guide them through the details.
2. Communicate your concerns: Discuss your challenges, your strengths and your frustrations with them and ask what plan of action they would take to help tackle your email management issues.
3. Offer feedback: By providing feedback along the way, including paises and suggestions for improvement, this will help empower your Virtual Assistant to start thinking independently and making the same decisions as you would.

Once your Virtual Assistant starts to learn the ropes of your business, your time will start to free up, as your VA will take care of the rest!

FREE Step-by-step Guide on Outsourcing Your Email and Calendar

If you would like an easy-to-follow guide on the exact steps to take when you delegate your inbox and schedule to a Virtual Assistant.

Here’s a FREE guide we’ve created for you to hit the ground running! The guide includes:

• Examples of VA Profiles, tools and experience
• Worksheets to help you cover all the tasks, responsibilities and qualities you’ll need from the VA
• End-to-end steps from preparation, recruiting to working with your VA.

The Bigger Picture | Long-Term Goal

If email management takes up way too much of your day, our Virtual Assistants can take it over for you! But not only that, they take the weight off your shoulders for several other tasks too.

When you’re hiring a Virtual Assistant to help your email inbox, you would want to think long-term. How is this person going to help me later on? The benefit of hiring a VA is that they will be devoted to you and your business. They will be by your side through every achievement and challenge, ready to support you, as you continue to grow on your entrepreneurial journey!

Your Virtual Angel will become a second you!

To find out more, book a FREE Discovery Call with us today and let’s have a chat!