Is your inbox a total mess? Let a virtual assistant help you. Here is a step by step playbook.
People spend approximately 172 minutes a day checking their email according to statista.com. There are only so many hours within a week to effectively conquer your weekly goals. Is checking your email a goal or is it just a communication platform that you are required to stay on top of?
By letting a virtual assistant handle your email inbox you are allowing yourself to:
- Save time: they can sort through emails and respond to urgent ones, which enables you to focus on other tasks
- Communicate better: As you grow, you are needed more. Which can lead to missed emails. Let’s be honest, we have all missed emails because our inbox sometimes can be nothing short of a dumpster fire. A virtual assistant can assist you in simply communicating better with your network.
- Improve organization: A virtual assistant will keep your inbox organized into folders and junk/spam deleted
Here is a step by step process to delegate your Google Gmail account
1.Unsubscribe from newsletters that you don’t read.
If you haven’t opened the email in a year, it’s junk. Unsubscribe from it. Freeing up your inbox from clutter will make the delegation that much easier for your virtual assistant to understand.
2.Set up your account for delegation.
How to set up Gmail delegate access:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVGqJR57Lcc (embed)
- Go to Settings > Accounts
- Scroll down until you see the portion that says Grant access to your account
- Click on Add another account
- Add your assistant’s email and click Next Step
- Click on Send email to grant access
This will prompt the system to send an email invite to your assistant. Once your assistant accepts the email invitation, they will be able to read, create, and respond to emails from your account. It’s important to note that the virtual assistant will need to be in your Google workspace.
How to set up Outlook delegate access:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI--KJi4BzU
- Under the File tab, click Account Settings > Delegate Access
- A delegate window will pop up. Click Add.
- Type in and select the name of the person you want to add. Important: your assistant must have an email under your organization so they can be added as a delegate. If you don’t have one, you will need to create one.
- A delegate permissions popup will appear. This lets you choose the Outlook tools you’d want to share with your assistant. Aside from your inbox, you can also share tasks, contacts, and notes.
- Outlook also allows you to select the level of access your assistant will have. Reviewers will be able to read emails. Authors can read and create emails, while editors can read, create, and modify items. Choose the best type of access depending on your needs and click ok.
- Lastly, select your assistant's name and click ok to finish the process.
Once you add your assistant as a delegate, they will have to add your mailbox to their Outlook profile as well.
3. Create a personal preference doc for your virtual assistant and share it with them. Just so they have a better understanding of what you do, who you are, and what kind of communication is expected within your inbox on a daily basis. Go through your inbox and think of what you would need if you knew absolutely nothing about the person who’s inbox it was.
- Your personal details such as birth date, social media handles, etc… If you do not have a digital business card, we highly recommend checking out blinq.me
- Family details such as names and ages of wife/husband and kids
- Business/Personal ventures you are currently involved in. Whether it is planning a flight for your next family vacation or trying to secure an insurance policy for a new company.
- A general idea of your weekly schedule. When do you like to work? When do you like to have off? When is family time?
4. Develop an email triage.
An email triage is the process of quickly sorting through a large volume of incoming emails and categorizing them based on their level of importance and urgency. This allows you to prioritize your email and respond to the most critical messages first, while postponing or delegating less important emails.
As and example:
- Needs more time - save it for later. These emails usually involve big decisions or need further research. As an example- you would request that your virtual assistant add this to your #inbox slack channel and any messages in this channel require a response from you.
- Doesn’t need a response- If it is a vendor or person you are doing business with drop the email into their folder or label. If it is not, this can be deleted.
- Needs a quick response (under 2 minutes)- respond, forward, or delegate it.
5. Ask your assistant to do an inbox reset
An email inbox reset refers to the process of clearing out and organizing the contents of your email inbox. This can involve various actions such as deleting old and unnecessary emails, archiving important messages, categorizing emails into folders, unsubscribing from unwanted newsletters and promotional emails, and marking emails as read or unread as necessary.
An inbox reset can help you improve your productivity by reducing clutter and making it easier to find important messages. It can also help you stay on top of new incoming emails by creating a streamlined and organized system for managing your inbox.
In some cases, an inbox reset might involve completely clearing out your inbox and starting from scratch. This can be a drastic step, but it can be helpful if you have a large backlog of emails or if your current inbox organization system is not working for you.
6. Have your virtual assistant create rules and filters within your inbox to organize them.
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6579?hl=en
7. Create a database of response templates over time
You can do this via a google doc and share it with your VA. On this google doc will be a list of responses for certain emails they can copy and paste.
Example:
Email- Can give me a good time you can get hop on a phone call and discuss?
Response- Please do me a favor, check out my schedule here and schedule by clicking this link(Scheduling link)
8. Check in with your VA periodically to see progress.
It will take time to fully pivot over to your virtual assistant effectively managing your email inbox. The good news is that along the way you have built your internal SOP to delegate it again, if something were ever to happen with your VA.
In conclusion, you will be happy you did this. You will free up a ton of time, and for the first time your email inbox will actually be organized! Enjoy the process. Delegation isn’t always fun but it’s absolutely pivotal to growth!
.jpg)
