Are emails bogging you down? Do you feel like you’re spending way too much time at your desk answering them? Do you feel like your inbox could use some sprucing up? Maybe you need a complete email spring cleaning! Whichever it is, it sounds to us like you’re in need of an inbox management virtual assistant.
The good news is that you can actually hire one today!
But before you go there, we put together a few things that we think you should know about hiring an inbox management virtual assistant. In this article, we are going to be covering
- What Is an Email Management Virtual Assistant?
- 11 Tasks to Hire an Inbox Management Virtual Assistant For
- How Much Does an Email Management VA Cost?
- What Are the Best Virtual Assistant Websites to Hire From?
- Case Study: How John Hired an Email VA & Saved 2 Hours Per Day
What Is an Email Management Virtual Assistant?
Also known as an inbox management virtual assistant, these individuals are responsible for handling your emails. Their duties involve organizing and sorting emails, creating folders and labels to categorize emails, color coding emails to make them easier to locate, and even deleting unnecessary emails or spam.
An outsourced inbox VA will even do all of this for you before you get on in the morning! This way, you can start your with a clean and beautiful inbox and avoid all the stress that unkept email will usually cause.
Now, that’s just the categorizing part of the job. You also have the replying side of things, which a more specialized email assistant can handle, too.
When you think about all of that and the amount of time it could take you to accomplish a single day’s worth of emails, you start to see the value of hiring an email assistant. These people typically have developed efficient methods. They will implement proven processes to clean up your inbox and keep it that way. They may also use software programs, as needed and if you prefer, to help manage all the online correspondence.
11 Tasks to Hire an Inbox Management Virtual Assistant For
- Deleting junk emails and keeping your inbox clear of any unwanted newsletters, subscriptions, or promos.
- Forwarding emails to the necessary people within your team or others
- Archiving old emails that might be useful later so you main box isn’t filled with old mail
- Responding to emails and setting up automatic replies
- Some email marketing like sending out mass emails such as newsletters and introductory emails to the selected list of customers
- Managing your contact list which involves sorting contacts in order of importance or priority, categorizing them with labels (customers, business partners, suppliers, internal team, etc.), adding new contacts, and deleting old ones
- Sorting emails in order of priority so you know which emails are urgent and which can wait
- Some customer support duties like answering customer inquiries
- Creating folders and applying labels to emails. Labels add specificity. Folders organize old and new emails for future reference.
- Setting up filters ensuring incoming emails go into the applicable folders tidying up your main inbox
- Answering emails about meetings and adding them to schedule
How Much Does an Email Management VA Cost?
Virtual assistants have a range of prices depending on a number of factors such as skill level, level of experience, scope of work, specialized knowledge, length of project, are you hiring a VA full-time or a part-time VA, and what country they come from.
If you want an inbox management virtual assistant who does only the admin side of things, then in the U.S. you’re looking at an average of $10-$12 per hour. VAs from the Philippines and India are less costly both averaging around $6-$7 per hour.
Now if you’re looking for a VA who can also do some marketing and customer support duties, that’s going to cost you a few more dollars. In the U.S. you could be looking at anywhere between $15-$22 and in the PH and India around $10-$15.
Again, these pricings vary depending on the scope and depth of the work. This is why negotiating rates and providing a detailed overview of the work should be done together. It’s bad form to hire someone and give them work you didn’t discuss beforehand. It’s even worse form to pile on extra work without just compensation.
Take care of your VAs and they will take care of you.
What Are the Best Virtual Assistant Websites to Hire From?
1. Zirtual
Zirtual is a VA platform known for its superb hiring processes and training programs to ensure VA excellence. They also have a matching process that connects you with an inbox va that is the best fit for your specific needs.
2. Upwork
Upwork is one of the most famous freelance marketplaces. They help connect businesses and freelancers together for better business opportunities. They have three unique methods for locating the talent you need.
3. Onlinejobs.ph
Known as “The Job Board for Virtual Workers in the Philippines”, Onlinejobsph allows you to exclusively hire Filipino VAs who are among the best in the business. Create a job post and let your inbox management virtual assistant come to you.
4. FreeUp
FreeUp offers a variety of talents in several categories. Their hiring and vetting process only allows the top percentile of freelancers to ensure excellent service on their platform. Their “No Turnover Guarantee” means you are protected in a freelancer quits on the job.
5. InboxDone
InboxDone is currently the only platform to offer VA services specializing in email management. They provide two assistants to cover for each other and adapt to your unique business needs and work style.
Case Study: How John Hired an Email VA & Saved 2 Hours Per Day
John is a small business owner who has had a boom in business lately. In the beginning, he was able to manage customer emails and manage communication with his suppliers, accounting team, team members, and other business partners. Now, John has been falling behind on his inbox and it is slowly eating away at his time. What used to take 30 minutes turned into almost 2 hours of sorting through a mishmash of customer inquiries, business inquiries, internal communications, newsletters, and other subscriptions he doesn’t even remember subscribing to!
His time is split between
- marketing his products to capitalize on the recent surge
- organizing logistics
- getting on meetings with his bookkeeping team and workers
- answering emails
- developing an FAQ so he doesn’t have to answer the same question 20 times over
That’s when John decided to look for an inbox management virtual assistant, and she was a lifesaver. After orienting the VA on the situation, the VA began working. The email was even a bit more cluttered at this point. After all, it took some time to find the right VA and go through the whole onboarding process.
However, because she had experience, the VA was able to easily create folders for the different people John was in contact with. She created one for the accounting team, one for the internal team, one for suppliers, and one for customer inquiries. The VA also set up filters so that emails that came from any of those groups would be sorted into those folders automatically. The VA also made sure to mark those unwanted subscriptions as spam. The ones that fit the categories that John said he was interested in, she placed in a separate folder.
John instructed the VA that he wanted to keep customer records, including email interactions. So, the VA made sure that all resolved inquiries were archived and labeled as such. This made it easier for John to locate those emails and refer back to them for the development of the FAQ.
John also mentioned that once the FAQ was finished, the email assistant could use that to answer customer inquiries. The VA, who had email marketing experience was able to help John set up an automated reply system.
Before he knew it, John was on top of his inbox game. The emails that he needed his input on were labeled “Urgent” and the others he left to his email assistant to respond to. He is now able to focus more of his time on developing his brand. This way, he also has more opportunities to scale up his business even further.
What Is Outsource School?
Outsource School helps you to unlock the potential of virtual assistants and accelerate your business growth.
This is the exact system Outsource School’s founders, Nathan Hirsch and Connor Gillivan, used to go from zero to 8 figures and 40+ virtual assistants with an exit in 2019.
Since being founded in 2020, Outsource School has helped 1,000+ business owners hire 2,000+ virtual assistants for their companies.
Schedule a free sales call to learn more
Free resources you might like:
- Outsource School Case Study: How We Scaled to 45+ VAs and 8 Figures in Revenue
- Free VA Calculator | See How Many VAs You Can Afford
- Free Training on 5 Keys to Working With VAs
- Learn Outsourcing 101 | Guides, Downloads, and Checklists
Conclusion
If you want to prevent a clogged-up inbox, stop the overwhelm, or mitigate the pileup, an inbox management virtual assistant might just be the person you need to clean things up.
