How I Keep Up with the Deluge of E-Mail

Internet business people need to learn two e-mail disciplines: (1) how to send out e-mail to their prospects and customers, and (2) how to keep from being buried under the deluge of e-mail they receive. I don't consider myself an expert e-mail shuffler, but I am still alive. Let me share what works for me. Since I've been a heavy e-mail user for years, I've looked for the most robust tools. I've settled on Microsoft Outlook 2000+ as the most flexible tool to handle both e-mail and people contacts, though there are other good tools.

I've found several approaches that help.

Spam seems to be getting worse every month. When I begin to answer e-mail in the morning I can have 70 to 120 e-mails in my inbox. 80% are spam. To cut it down to size, I've been sorting on the "To" field.

With Microsoft Outlook 2000, I've found it helpful to customize my Inbox so I can see the "To" field. To do this, open the Inbox and place your cursor over the top bar that says "Subject". Right-click, and from the menu that pops up select "Customize Current View." Then select the button that says "Fields." Highlight the "To" field on the left side and click on the "Add" button. Then click on "OK" and click again on "OK." Now the "To" field should be displayed for your Inbox.

Once I sort on the "To" field (by clicking on the bar that says "To" at the top), I can quickly see anything that isn't addressed to one of my e-mail addresses. This spam gets deleted immediately. Oh, I'll scan quickly for lists to which I've subscribed, but if it isn't to one of my e-mail addresses, then it isn't important that I read it. This makes quick work of about 70% of my e-mail, and gives me hope when tackling the other 30%.

Organizing

To organize my business correspondence I've created dozens of folders inside Outlook. The one labeled "Advertisers" is where I keep e-mails from potential advertisers. If an advertiser decides to purchase ads, I'll create a subfolder under "Advertisers" with the advertiser's company name. If I get too many folders under a single topic, I'll move inactive advertiser folders under an "inactive" folder, or start a new topic. Another folder called "Fix" is where I store suggestions on improving my website and fixing errors that readers spot and share with me. One of the keys is to develop a top-level hierarchy of a few folders, each with a number of subfolders underneath.

Filtering

Modern e-mail client programs have a wonderful feature called "filters." These allow you to program your system so that when an e-mail comes in with a certain subject line or from a particular client or company, it is automatically sorted into one of your folders. You can also have the entire e-mail message sorted looking for key words that will determine the e-mail's destiny. For example, I've programmed my system so that any e-mail that has three exclamation points in a row is filtered into my "junk" folder. I figure that only spammers are so excited that they think something is worth three exclamation points. Normal people limit themselves to two. :-) Once in a while I'll check my junk folder in case an enthusiastic friend got in there by mistake, and then I'll delete the rest.

Outlook 2000 and Eudora Pro programs have the capability of scanning the e-mail for keywords in the subject or the body, and then replying to certain e-mails automatically, but this requires some sophisticated programming. (See your instruction manual for details. Some desktop e-mail programs also allow this feature including Gammadyne Mailer (www.gammadyne.com/mmail.htm), Mailloop (www.marketingtips.com/mailloop/t.x/15267/), and others.

Unfortunately AOL 4, 5, and 6 don't include filtering features, but you'll find them in Outlook Express, Outlook 2000, Netscape Communicator, Eudora, and many other programs. Promise yourself that you'll spend 15 minutes learning how to use filters. It is an investment that will free up hours of your life very quickly.

Answering with a Canned Response

Many e-mails I receive are informational only -- no need for a response. If I want to keep the message, I will move it to the appropriate folder. I've found that e-mail I can't answer immediately tends to be neglected, even though I have the best of intentions. So, if possible, I try to answer everything promptly. That means that many messages are answered with a sentence or two.

It also means learning to say "no." Though I'd like to help everyone individually, I've found that it just isn't feasible -- my primary assistance is with the materials available on my website. I think that most business people who are my subscribers understand the concept of paying for detailed research or personalized information. Therefore, long e-mails that ask several questions are usually answered with a message that suggests a paid consulting session.

Many of the e-mails I receive ask the same kinds of questions. I've prepared what Outlook 2000 calls "Signatures" for messages I find myself answering many times. Other programs may call these "templates" or "stationery." These contain boilerplate text that will form the bulk of the answer. I've included a few of these boilerplate files (www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/email_sigs.htm) so you can see what they're like. Please don't be offended if you receive one of these boilerplate messages. These help me survive and still try to meet the customer's needs.

Using a Signature

I conclude every reply I send out with a "signature" -- a 6- to 8-line footer that gives full contact details as well as a plug for my business and a mention of my information products. In the signature file I include a closing, such as,

  I wish you every success!

  God bless you,
  Ralph

This begins with a wish for my correspondent's success and a request for God's blessing on him or her. I don't intend to offend, but to offer a prayer for God's goodness. I've had a few atheists who are offended by any mention of God and a few people who warn me of the dangers of mixing business and religion. But I've had many hundreds of people thank me for wishing them God's blessing.

Then, at the bottom of every message, I include all the contact information necessary for correspondents to get in touch with me, as well as a one-line plug for my business and the names of my information products. I don't include a fax number since I only disclose that to my clients.

------------------------------------------------------------
WILSON INTERNET SERVICES            http://www.wilsonweb.com 
   E-Commerce and Web Marketing Publishing and Consulting
Ezines: Web Marketing Today, Web Commerce Today, Doctor Ebiz
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, Director                 (916) xxx-xxxx
PO Box 308                    Rocklin, California 95677, USA
----------------- xxxxxx@wilsonweb.com -------------------

If you aren't using a signature for your e-mail, you're missing out on an important marketing and communication tool. Take 10 minutes and learn how to do this with your e-mail program.

Flagging

Outlook 2000 allows me to flag certain e-mails for future reference, and even add a reminder date to follow up on this message. I often use priority flags to keep me aware of e-mail that still needs some action.

Online Forms

Once upon a time, I put my e-mail address and contact information on every page of my website. But as a small business, I found myself talking on the phone way too often with people either seeking to pick my brain for free or others too lazy to read the ample amount of material I make available on my website. Also, any e-mail address on a webpage is inevitably found by an evil e-mail extractor program and sucked into a spam list.

I was drowning. My first step was to replace mailto e-mail links with a forms-to-email application (see www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/email-forms.htm). Here's why:

Structure. Mailto links don't require your customer to give any contact information -- even a name. So if you want to make a phone call to follow up on a question, it can be difficult. My contact forms (example: www.wilsonweb.com/contact/) help me ask for specific contact information (though nearly all of these fields are optional). Correspondents usually fill in the majority of these fields. This makes it easy to create a contact entry in Outlook 2000 for individuals I may want to contact later.

Subject Lines. My contact form requires correspondents to pick a subject line for their e-mail. This way I know instantly what they are inquiring about, and my filters sort each message nicely into the appropriate folder in Outlook, ready to be considered with other similar inquiries.

Spam Considerations. Realize that your e-mail address may be hidden from view using an online form, but e-mail extractor programs will pick up your e-mail address from a hidden field in the form. The only way I know to prevent this is to code the recipient e-mail field into the CGI script. This will probably require a programmer, but it will save you from receiving some nuisance spam.

Mailto Subjects

As a quick alternative to an online form, you can set the subject line for mailto e-mail links as follows:

Unsubscribing

Finally, I'm forcing myself to unsubscribe to newsletters that I no longer read. There are many excellent ones out there -- and I don't want to offend the editors who may be my friends. But I can't read them all. I do recommend unsubscribing from spam mailings that have a web interface to delete your e-mail address. I DON'T recommend unsubscribing by sending an e-mail to a free e-mail address at Yahoo.com.

FAQs

For my weekly Doctor Ebiz newsletter I have a form on which readers can submit questions for future issues (www.doctorebiz.com/questions). I found I was getting the same questions asked again and again. Recently, I put a search feature at the top of the form to encourage people to search for the answer to their question in previous issues before submitting a question for consideration. I've found that this has cut down my e-mail dramatically.

A link to FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) at the top of your form can cut down on inquiries, too. RightNow Technologies (www.rightnow.com) helps companies prepare an online knowledge base designed to cut down on their e-mail customer service load.

Unadvertised E-Mail Addresses

Many business people have a private e-mail address that they only give to friends or clients -- not to the general public. This allows you to check often and respond quickly to these special correspondents. That's fine, so long as you don't ignore inquiries from potential customers who aren't privileged with a special e-mail address.

To survive on the Internet, businesses need to find ways to channel e-mail in such a way that they can respond appropriately to their customers. Remember, business is all about the customer. When you're setting up contact mechanisms, make sure you're thinking of your customers, not just of yourself.

If you have any methods to cut down on spam sorting while meeting customers needs, please send me an e-mail (mailto:rfwilson@wilsonweb.com?subject=Email_Handling).