If you’re a prominent figure in society, a full-time businessman, or a celebrity, then you must be faced with one, overwhelming problem: Responding to the never-ending influx of emails in your inbox.
For a business, receiving a lot of emails is a positive thing. This means that your efforts are, at the very least, gaining recognition and more people are becoming curious about it. Receiving so many is probably a dream come true but also your worst nightmare at the same time.
On one hand, you’re gaining the attention you want. On the other, you are faced with the huge dilemma of having to reply to all of them. Some tend to think that replying to emails is no biggie but the magnanimity of your “many” and an actual famous person’s “many” is entirely different. If you’re a big company for example, we’re not just talking about a few hundred emails here; we’re literally talking about thousands. Maybe you can get some tips and tricks from a CEO here: https://www.inc.com/betty-liu/this-ceo-s-genius-trick-to-managing-hundreds-of-emails-a-day.html.
Why do you think there are job positions like Email Manager? Obviously, it’s because simply having to respond to all those emails requires a ton of work. Still, if you want to reap the most out of your fleeting popularity, it’s important that you maintain relationships online via email marketing. You also have to entertain industry-related questions and inquiries if you really want to boost your sales performance. Without doubt, answering emails is a very important thing you must accomplish.
So how, how do big companies and famous personalities manage to keep up with all their online communication demands?
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, hiring an email manager is one idea you can use. Having someone other than yourself act as your secretary and take careful note of your incoming and outgoing messages is certainly a lot of help. You can train them to respond in your fashion and keep your lines updated and responsive at all times.
However, it’s also particularly hard to find good help these days. Some outsource to freelancers and customer support agencies but there’s really no assurance that you’d get quality work. Plus, employee wages are particularly high these days too. There are also absences and sick leaves to worry about. If your trusted personnel happen to go AWOL, you are basically back to where you started. In fact, it’ll be much harder to cope since you’re not used to the activity anymore. So what you really need is capable, consistent, and long-term help – the kind that won’t leave you hanging during the most crucial times. For this, I suggest using autoresponder services. Read more about the outsourcing industry here.
What Is An Autoresponder?
It’s actually pretty easy to decode what an autoresponder does. We’ve basically two words morphed together there: Auto and Responder. Auto is short for automatic which means that it’s something that happens immediately, something that is done with or without cue. Responder is, well, someone or something that “responds” or “reacts” perhaps. In other words, an autoresponder is a program that immediately responds as it is programmed to.
There are email responders out in the online market today. One such example is AWeber – which is a very powerful online tool for businessmen and online entrepreneurs. Check out an Aweber review here. By programming the autoresponder to reply to emails in certain ways, you can leave the tough work to the software. You can go ahead and deal with a lot more important stuff and get back to your emails later in the day. At the very least, you never let the customers waiting. The autoresponder lets them know right away if you’re unavailable to reply at the moment and tells them when to expect your reply.
Being a customer myself, I appreciate it when companies get back to me – even if it’s with an auto-response email. More than anything, I hate waiting around like a sitting duck. I have more important things to attend to and better places to be. For the company or person to not leave you hanging and actually setting a time for you to expect a response is a big thing in this crazy, fast-paced world. With that, you can at least manage your time better.
But, why use auto-respond? Doesn’t that mean you have to check back on the emails later anyway?
Why Should You Bother Using Autoresponders?
Well, that depends. You can program an autoresponder (well some really good ones) to also classify emails for you just like how Google mail classifies mails that they suspect would be important. If it doesn’t look like spam or other advertorial email, the responder often alerts the owner of the email address to look at the message later.
You may not care to believe this but many entrepreneurs really value client interaction. They believe that by being more up-close and personal with their clients, they are able to earn their favour better. The autoresponder is just there to let their clients know that they will hear back eventually. Then, at a later time, these entrepreneurs really do email clients themselves, answering questions and inquiries about products and services.
I do think that this kind of approach works much more effectively with clients as well. Even I would do the same if I wanted to receive better feedback later on. But it might also depend on the nature of the business. Life coaches, for example, have a greater responsibility to respond to clients personally. After all, they can’t afford to be lax about client communication.
Anyway, if you’re having the same problem as many others and you’re constantly drowned with a sea of emails, getting an autoresponder is an excellent idea to consider. By doing so, you can worry less about who is taking care of your clients when you’re not around and start focusing more on running your online or offline business. Of course, it’s still important that you get back to very important emails later but it still helps to have a programmable secretary to help you out!