There are tons of services you can offer as a Virtual Assistant, and email management happens to be one of them!
If you enjoy organizing and bringing order to chaos, you’ll probably love offering this service.
It’s an especially great choice for new VAs because it’s simple to learn and highly in demand. In fact, many Virtual Assistants start their journey by offering email management as one of their first services.
In this post, I’ll explain why email management is a fantastic service to offer as a VA and break down the basic steps to get started.
Email Management as a Virtual Assistant
Email management is an excellent service to offer, especially if you’re a new Virtual Assistant. Here’s why:
💌 You likely have experience with email already, which makes it a lower barrier to entry.
💌 Small business owners, like coaches, often struggle with staying on top of their overflowing inboxes. This makes email management a highly sought-after service.
💌 The skills required to offer email management are easy to learn, such as inbox organization, filtering, and labeling emails.
💌 Once you’ve completed the initial email cleanup, this service can transition into ongoing support, providing you with consistent monthly income.
💌 Clients see immediate results because there’s a visible improvement in their inbox organization, which can lead to better productivity, less stress, and better customer service response times. It can also lead to lots of client referrals!
💌 Email management can be easily scaled. You can start out offering basic tasks, like organizing an inbox, and grow into more advanced responsibilities, such as customer service, managing newsletters, and handling email marketing campaigns. This can increase your profits!
💌 You can also offer this service as a one-time project, where you organize and clean up the client’s inbox, leaving them to manage it on their own afterward. Alternatively, it can be packaged as a VIP Day service, providing a focused, high-value experience in a single day.
As you can see, there are lots of positives to offering email management as a Virtual Assistant. But what does it involve exactly? I’ll cover that next!
What Does Email Management Involve?
Email Management includes organizing emails, setting up systems for incoming emails, and training the client on how to manage their emails.
Organize Emails
After analyzing the client’s email situation, you can determine what needs to be done to organize them. This will commonly include unsubscribing and archiving unnecessary emails and setting up labels.
Labels are what Gmail uses to organize emails, and they’re similar to folders. You’ll need to create labels based on what the client has in their inbox. For example, you could create a label called “Financials” and a sub-folder called “Income” and another called “Expenses.”
You’ll also want to create a label for the client and put all emails you need them to look at there. That way, they aren’t going into the inbox where you’re working.
Create Systems for Incoming Emails
While you’re organizing, you’ll want to keep the inbox nice and tidy and eliminate new emails from piling up. This is where filters come in handy.
You can create filters for many different tasks, but one you might want to set up is for certain emails to skip the inbox and go directly to a label. That way, the email never appears in the inbox again, helping it stay clear, but is tucked away under the proper label so the client can read it later. 🙌
Prevent Emails From Piling Up Again
An important part of email management is establishing new habits to prevent emails from piling up again.
One approach is to offer ongoing support to help the client maintain their inbox.
Another option is to train the client on how to manage their emails effectively.
Whether it’s you or the client handling the inbox, every email should be sorted into one of the following actions: archive, delete, respond, or add to their project management software if it requires further action. Once that’s done, the email should be archived to prevent the inbox from becoming a storage space again.
It’s also essential to guide the client on which labels or folders need daily attention. This often includes labels for customer service or client-related emails that require immediate action.
Additional Services You Can Offer
One of the great things about email management is that it can be expanded to include additional services which means more money for you!
Here are some services you might want to tack on for a premium service or as add-on services:
- Customer Service – Reply to customers on behalf of the client.
- Email Templates – Create templates for common questions that the client gets. This makes responding to emails much quicker.
- Project Management Integration – Link emails to project management tools like Asana or Trello.
Clients can definitely benefit from an email management service. They’ll feel less stressed and overwhelmed when checking their emails and can stay on top of important emails and tasks. It’s a great service to offer clients and something new VAs can easily do because it doesn’t require a skillset that takes time to develop.
If you’re interested in managing emails for clients, you’re in luck! I have a Create an Email Management Service training inside my membership, the Introvert VA Club. You’ll have access to this training, the huge library of resources, and our supportive community when you join.
Just go to introvertvaclub.com to sign up, and you’ll have access to both of these courses and all the other trainings included. Plus, support from me and other VAs in our community!
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