Today we’re talking about the thing that side hustlers and online business owners love and hate at the same time.
Your inbox. Specifically, your email inbox. Are there other inboxes? I don’t know… But I digress.
The reason this topic even came up is because of a post from one of my students in a Facebook group that we’re both in. She said:
“Can we talk about #goals? Specifically, inbox goals. Mine is out of control…30,000 emails, 8,000 unread ???? Obviously I need a system. What are your tips and tricks✨ for managing your inbox? Do you have an awesome folder structure? PLEASE share! I know I can’t be the only one struggling, dreaming to one day reach #inboxzero”
She’s not the only one struggling. My best friend has the notification on her phone turned on that tells her how many unread emails she has, and the last time I saw it, it was over 57,000. 57,000!! Did you know that red notification button could go that high? I didn’t. It gives me anxiety ever time I look at it. What if there’s something important in there???
I mean, whatever happened to the anticipation used to feel back in the day when I’d fire up AOL wait a hundred years for it to connect and the hear “You’ve Got Mail” and think YES!!!!! OMG I can’t wait to see what’s in there!!!!” Yes, I’m dating myself. I’m 38 years old and yes I totally had AOL back in the 90’s.
In 2018, I open up my inbox, see all the bolded unread emails and just feel dread. There’s a bunch of work I didn’t plan to do today…
As a side hustler, an online entrepreneur, email is crucial to our businesses. That’s where we develop relationships with our customers, it’s how we deliver value, it’s how we make sales.
But on the flip side, we hate our own inboxes. We complain about getting too much email. We feel overwhelmed by email. We want to outsource inbox management to someone else and we wish it would just go away.
Can we really have it both ways? Can we hate our own inbox while expecting our customers to love theirs? Aren’t we putting out bad energy into the world and tanking our own marketing efforts?
I mean, I know that’s a little woo woo, but if I’m sitting here hating my inbox while I’m writing marketing emails that are supposed to sell, should I be surprised if that email isn’t converting as well as I’d expect it to?
At that point we’re just adding to the problem, right?
So let’s talk about mythical INBOX ZERO.
It’s not a unicorn, it actually exists. I’ve seen it. And I’m constantly chasing it like I imagine a drug addict would chase a high.
When I reach it, I feel so accomplished, like I’m DONE with all my work. Like literally done. No one needs anything from me, and now I’m free to go about my life doing whatever I want to do.
But it only lasts for a few seconds until that next email arrives. And then I feel defeated. Why even bother? I’m never going to be DONE.
And then I decide, screw it, I’m not even going to try. I just let them pile up again, until I’m so stressed out about it I can’t even look at it, and then two weeks later I’m embarrassed to have to say, “So sorry for the delay in responding to this really important question you asked me that was going to help you decide whether or not you were going to buy something from me…”
I was watching a show on HBO called Hard Knocks all about the Cleveland Browns training camp, and one of the players, Carl Nassib, was lecturing the other players about how if they spend two hours a day on Instagram, that’s one entire month of the year they’ve wasted on Instagram.
And then I was like, OMG, I spend more than two hours a day checking email and doing the things I need to do that result from the email I’m getting, I’m wasting my life on email!!!
I made email the enemy. I’d say things like “It’s someone else’s agenda for my day. I have things I need to focus on, I can’t let other people’s agenda for me distract me.”
I’m totally guilty of dreading my inbox and I’ve tried so many different things to loosen its grip on me.
I’ve outsourced it to my VA team and they would go through and label and prioritize it all for me and handle the things they knew how to take care of… But I still had to go in and respond to most of it anyway so that strategy didn’t really help.
I’ve tried an autoresponder to answer common questions that I get and let people know when to expect a response, but that doesn’t stop the emails from coming.
I’ve tried not looking at email first thing when I wake up because it would derail me from what I had to do that day because I refused to make time for it.
I’ve tried only checking email once a day and deleting and prioritizing – but checking is different than actually doing the things in there that need to be done.
None of it has really worked. No strategy I tried has left me feeling less stressed about email.
Except this one:
“Change your dang attitude about email and eat the frog.”
How can I expect to be welcome in my subscribers’ inboxes if they aren’t welcome in mine? How can I say that I’m using email to build a relationship if it’s only one-sided?
Email is how I make money in my business. And every email I get is an opportunity. To build a relationship, to build trust, to produce some income, to grow my brand. What I decide to do with those opportunities totally depends on my plan and my focus at that moment in my business, but they are all opportunities.
And what I mean by eating the frog – that’s a reference to Brian Tracy’s reference to Mark Twain’s alleged quote (and I say alleged because I always look this stuff up before I pass it along and the website I use says that’s a common mistake, Mark Twain never said it – but whatever, I’ll link up to both of these in the show notes, but success coach Brian Tracy says:
“As Mark Twain once said “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
The frog is that one thing you have on your to-do list that you have absolutely no motivation to do and that you’re most likely to procrastinate on. Eating the frog means to just do it, otherwise, the frog will eat you meaning that you’ll end up procrastinating it the whole day.
Once that one task is done, the rest of the day will be an easier ride and you will get both momentum and a sense of accomplishment at the beginning of your day.”
Email is my frog. It’s the thing that I procrastinate on the most, and it’s the thing that when I do first thing in the morning, I feel super accomplished. And right now, when I do it every day, I can keep up on it and all the tasks I find in there.
So here’s exactly how I manage my email:
First, I have 3 email accounts – all on Gmail.
My business-branded email that’s on all of my marketing, a second email address that I use just for my own business accounts, like how I sign up for any paid services or that all my financial accounts are attached to, what I use to join business related courses, or even how I sign up to other people’s email lists for business-related freebies, and a third purely personal email address that I use for ordering stuff online.
Even though I check them all daily, my business email address, shannon@wp-bff.com, is the only one I really pay attention to every day, and that’s the one I’m going to share these inbox management strategies for. I really don’t care that much about those non-customer facing accounts…
So I’m going to share with you some one-time management strategies, and some daily management strategies that will help you tame your inbox:
So here’s the one-time stuff:
- Create rules to archive stuff. If there’s something in there that I know I want to have, but I don’t need to see it – like I get a ton of email from my WordPress sites that I manage, but I don’t want that stuff in my inbox, I create rules that label it archive it. Like, I’ll create the rule the first time I make that decision where I’m like, yeah, I want that if I need to search for it, but I don’t need to see it every day.
- I also turn off all email notifications from Social Media or any other services like Slack. I do keep Asana notifications turned on just because I’m in email more than Asana, and I need to know when people need stuff from me to complete their projects, but mostly, I don’t need that stuff in my inbox. That just reminded me that I need to turn off notifications from LinkedIn, it’s the only one I still get notifications from.
Those two things will keep a ton of unnecessary email out of your inbox.
And then daily, here’s how I tackle my email:
- In the morning while I’m having my coffee, from my phone I skim my inbox and archive everything that I won’t read or doesn’t need a response. I’m on an iPhone, so I just hit the edit button, tap all the ones that I’m deleting, and hit the Archive button. My GSuite setting is set to archive rather than trash, so I know I can always search for something if I need it so I can make this decision pretty quickly.
- I also unsubscribe from anything right away that I know I don’t want anymore. Because I don’t use my customer-facing email address to sign up for email lists and such, I don’t have to do much unsubscribing.
- Then I respond to anything that simply requires a response. It doesn’t require me to actually do anything, like look up their account or have to gather any information prior to responding. I use the Send and Archive function if I’m responding from Gmail on my laptop, this just automatically removes the email from my inbox, but it’s archived if I need it later. I may also add a label to it before I send and archive if it’s a client, just so it’s easier to find later if needed. If I’m on my phone I can’t send and archive, so the next time I’m on my laptop I just quickly archive what I’ve already responded to.
- Then I delegate anything I can delegate to my team. Right now, I can’t delegate much, but I’m on a mission to create a mini-me that knows my business as well as I do and can be my right-hand woman. It’s my dream to pass off much much more than I’m able to now to a trusted team member.
- Then with what’s left, I’ll do anything I can quickly do in just a few minutes – if it’s sending a link to book a consult or reserve time on my calendar, a cancellation request or a quick lookup of info.
- And with what’s left after that, I give it a label – Income Producing, Client Work or Needs Response. If it’s client work for an existing client, I respond and let them know when they can expect the work to be done, add it to the next spot on my schedule and archive the email. If it’s income producing, that means it’s potential client work and if I have time left in checking my email, I’ll respond. If not, it’s the first thing I do at the end of the day in my 2nd email time block. If it’s Needs Response, it’s probably something that’s going to take me longer than 5 minutes to handle, and so those are things that I do last. I might sit on these for a few days.
- Friday is Inbox Zero day. On Fridays, I like to knock out everything left in my inbox, and the rule is that I start at the bottom and work my way up. No skipping around. Every email must leave the inbox whether I decide that I’m not responding, or I have to do 30 minutes of work first to respond or what. That email is leaving the inbox.
So that’s how I tackle email. I know that inbox zero never lasts long, but it’s way better than inbox 100 or 3000 or 57,000.
So what do you do if you have thousands of unread emails? I’d say go back two or three weeks, and archive everything before that. If there was something important in there it’s searchable, and if it was really important that person will follow up, and if they don’t, well, oh well. You’re getting it together so it doesn’t happen again.
Then set up your filters or rules, unsubscribe from everything you can, then play the inbox zero game and start at the oldest email first, do something with it. Make a decision, be done. And then keep up on it daily from there.
And work on your mindset about email. There really are treasures in there. Life-changing treasures. If you’re running an online business, email is unavoidable. In fact, it’s crucial.
So make your inbox something you look forward to so that you can feel good about sending email to your customers – because whether you like it or not, email marketing is here to stay.
Today’s pep talk is brought to you by Bluehost. Go to www.shannonmattern.com/bluehost and get 36 months of web hosting for just $2.95 a month. That’s less than one trip to Starbucks a month – and if you’re anything like me, you’re at Starbucks more than that!
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