Dealing with a Deluge of Demanding Email
Posted by Rhiannon Louise on June 05, 2007
Filed Under Your Online Business
You might not know it yet, but you’re about to be inundated with a million requests for direct assistance – some of them genuine, many of them rubbish - you’re going to be offered JVs, partnerships and opportunities - most of them time consuming, almost all of them income imperceptible – and you’re going to be dealing with a deluge of demanding email day in and day out…
Why?
Because you’re building your online empire, you’re putting yourself out there, you’re drawing attention to who you are, what you do and how you do it and there are a million people out there who will try and leech off you, suck you dry, steal your ideas and your time and just a tiny few who will want to directly benefit you and add value to your company.
The problem is, how to sift the gold from the dirt – and it really is an ever increasing problem as your business grows, your time disappears and your patience runs thin.
But fear not, I have a few ideas to help you.
Right at this moment in time you might get excited when you open your inbox and see a few emails from people who have found you from your increasing presence on the internet…these people and their emails confirm to you that yes, the internet does actually work, you can build a successful online business, you don’t have to be a giant corporate to have people take an interest in what you say and what you do.
But incredibly quickly as your inbox fills up and up with demanding emails your excitement will turn to annoyance, frustration, confusion and possibly even result in you declaring ‘email bankruptcy’ - which has become the latest fluffy technical terminology adopted by the media and which simply means you delete your entire inbox and start all over again – meaning you probably lose a few paypal notifications and important emails from your mother about her impending visit along the way.
So, what can you expect and what should you do?
You can expect constant demands on your time in the form of emailed requests for help or offers of futile joint ventures that you have to sift through quickly, largely delete, sometimes take a deep breath and not take offence at and occasionally respond to with a polite ‘no can do’ or a brief answer to a simple question.
Very, very occasionally you will actually receive a well written and polite request for assistance from a valued reader that you decide you want to help - and even less frequently still you’ll get a blinder of an opportunity that you’d be mad not to take up!
As an aside - here’s an example of the last three emails I received bang, bang, bang in a row, one after the other and which inspired me to write this very article: -
1) “…I’m hoping you can help me - I’m currently doing a bit of research for an article for an online news agency and wondered if you would be able to help me out with a couple of questions I had, or provide any comment on them. I understand you must be extremely busy - and not to worry if you can’t - but any help with the follow five questions would be very much appreciated…”
2) “…with that said, we are not a big organisation, and have only recently moved to London and established the above mentioned. However the strategy appears to be working and I am currently working on the television series and this is what stuck in my brain when I was reading your articles and appreciating your obvious experience. So what I suppose I am suggesting is that maybe you would be great as a presenter on our television series. I think that it could work in conjunction with and support what you are currently doing…”
3) “…I have been reading your excellent articles and wanted to touch base. I am looking for a story to appear in the August edition of our magazine and was wondering if you accept freelance commissions? If so, could you please contact me…”
One of these was a freebie research seeker, one was a scam/hoax/git and one was a potentially interesting proposition…see if you can work out which was which! By the way, I could tell that just by scanning each email and that is the position that you have to get to…
So here’s how you deal with a deluge of demanding email: -
1) Set aside only a certain amount of time each day to deal with your email.
Personally I deal with it once at the start of the day and once at the end…and limit myself to a maximum of half an hour for each inbox viewing and handling process…other people tell me I should only ever open my inbox once a day so you need to decide what’s right for you depending on the type of business you’re running.
The key is to avoid hanging round your inbox on the off chance that something interesting will pop into it as this will actually result in you distracting yourself and wasting your precious time.
2) Get software like SpamBully installed on your computer to automatically cut down on the amount of rubbish you receive daily (but try and restrain yourself from firing back millions of ‘get lost’ emails to spammers because although it’s seriously satisfying, it’s not the most productive use of your time!!)
You don’t have to select SpamBully, it’s just the one I like to use because it’s so easy!
3) Don’t feel you have to reply to every single email you get – ignore the ones blatantly asking for your time and offering nothing in return. Ignore the ones that are badly written, rude or tersely abrupt because if someone can’t be bothered to invest time into asking you for your time, why should you be bothered to reply?
4) Don’t feel bad that you can help everyone – if you receive a common request for advice or help why not use it as inspiration for a post on your blog, an article on your website or even a product or eBook? That way you will be helping all those who write in with the common issue, you’ll be saving others the bother of more research and you’ll be adding value to your web based resource at the same time.
5) If something does look interesting send back a tentative email of interest but get the person to send you far more information before you ever commit because you have to be sure that what’s on offer is of sufficient value for you to invest your time and expertise in it!
6) Make time to reply to friends – but again, limit this time, maybe collate all friendly emails in a folder and respond to them out of hours or on the weekend because while friends and family are the only things that matter, to be able to enjoy them and look after them you do have to earn an income too in order to keep a roof over your head so mail them out of working hours.
7) Don’t disregard your readers – after all without our readers and our followers, our clients and our customers we’d have no business! So, watch out for genuine emails of concern or honest and open requests for help based on promises you make for example.
8) Be email scan savvy but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and delete a potentially thrilling joint venture proposal…I’m still watching out for that genuine TV deal or offer of a dinner date with Johnny Depp so that we can discuss how best I can promote him online!
In conclusion, if you’re struggling under a daily deluge of demanding email you’re not alone; we just have to put some commonsense strategies in place to prevent us from drowning under our inboxes and what’s more, we all have to learn to delete, say ‘no,’ not take offence at rude responses and to sort out the wheat from the chaff…managing email is a process that we can all easily implement and make work for us and our businesses.
