Tool Box
Issue No. 11 - June/July 2003
Four Time-Saving Email Tips
Spend Less Time as a Slave to your Inbox
by Lee Hopkins
Email is the 'killer app' of the internet, the most widely used tool available today.
I've already written www.hopkins-e-strategy.com/emails.html about how to structure a great email, but here's 4 great tips for making sure that you take advantage of this fabulous tool.
The result? A powerful marketing system that will save you lots of time and enable you to spend more time promoting and advertising your business.
1. Know thy email program!
Whilst all email programs exist for the same reason - to send and receive email — and whilst most of them work in roughly similar ways, it still pays you to spend 30-45 minutes with your email program to get to the nitty-gritty parts. The sort of parts that mastering will enable you to cut valuable minutes off your day dealing with your inbox.
Like how to set up an auto-reply, or a signature, or automatically save incoming and outgoing emails into different folders, like a well-organised filing cabinet.
Most email programs have very good 'Help' files — make use of them in your quest for more knowledge and more time.
Once you've got a good grip on your email program, move on to tip 2...
2. Automation is vital!
You should aim to spend about 85-90% of your time promoting your business, NOT answering emails! If, like me, you get over a 100 emails a day, not automating your emails can be a real killer as far as your personal productivity goes.
Remember how in stage 1 I suggested that you get to grips with your email program and learn how to automatically save emails into folders? Well, this is a key strategy I use to save myself time.
Why should I waste precious time moving from subject to subject, looking at each incoming email in turn, when I can have my email program file my incoming emails automatically into subjects of my choosing. Subjects like each different project I'm working o...
