Gmail Sorted Your Own Inbox - How Online Marketers Should Respond?

Everyone benefits from a more organized inbox. And if your business rely on email, surely you'll get stressed out seeing all work-related emails sorted out automatically and categorized in no way matches your working style.

So for fellow virtual assistants, here's an easier solution for us who prefer not to mess with Gmail’s initiative.

Save Valuable Time with a Virtual Assistant

Your time is valuable. If you think hiring a VA is costly, think again? How much energy and effort do you spend trying to get time-consuming work done such as replying to emails and answering phone calls?

You think that saves you $8 per hour because you refuse to hire someone who is capable of taking care of it for a reasonable amount. The time you spend doing the $8 an hour work will only make your business $8, your time could be worth more than that like $200 if you spent your valuable time focusing on business strategies that would result in more money.

Think how you could be more lucrative, spend your time where the returns are better. Virtual Assistants are not a luxury service, they are a necessity to any business worth its salt.

Virtual Assistants are all-around hands, a good one who know its way around your workflow is worth keeping. A Virtual Assistant is a cost-effective multi-tasker and time maximizer. What's great about having a VA is that you can assign them tasks and forget about it. Yes, let go of the clerical stuff and relax. Just expect a very detailed report in your inbox. Before you know it half of your work load is done for the week.

Why You Should Let an Online Executive Assistant Answer your Emails

Email is important to any business in this day and age, your business contacts are your financial life blood which brings in the money, and making sure they’re updated about your business is an extreme priority. However, getting tons of email every day can be overwhelming particularly if they reach the hundred or thousand mark, so do you personally need to answer each email that comes in?

You’ll have to rely on email filters to select what messages you should be top priority. Apart from that, replying to these emails require a lot of effort, mental energy and time.Answering each query from your inbox wouldn’t be a smart business decision- that would just be insane. It would be pure drudge work on your end, processing and sifting through whether one is worth replying to or simply meant to be deleted, sent to archive, forwarded to or just left merely unread. Trust me, you’ll be drowning in more emails as soon as you finish the first set.

If email management is a constant issue and your clients demand consistent customer service, it may be worthwhile to invest in an email expert such as an online executive assistant.

An online executive assistant can help you determine which emails need your utmost attention. With a strict set of guidelines, you can have your assistant sort your inbox, you can also have them respond to inquiries in a specific way like sending out email blasts and answering general business questions. They can simply categorize emails and purge out the spam for you.

Email management is a big productivity killer and by letting go of your inbox and trusting a reliable online executive assistant, you can start to focus on more important and profitable tasks.

Your Virtual Assistant Budget

How much should one pay for a Virtual Assistant?
Overall, hiring a VA costs much cheaper than hiring a full-time employee. The per hourly rate varies and the price is dependent on these factors:

• VA skill set and experience (copywriting, project management, programming, web design)
• Number of hours you need them online (8 hour shifts, 4 hour part-time shifts, weekends only, 40 hour work week)
• The scope of the work load (daily progress reports, job quotas, etc)

The general going rate for VAs is $20-75 per hour. VAs are a wise investment decision, as they will eventually generate enough revenue to pay for the cost of keeping them. Sometimes the revenue returns would be twice or triple than what you would expect. Consider that versus the idea of doing all the workload yourself and earning very little, know the potential earnings of your business, if you have a VA staff on call. Besides the fact that you will rake in profit with the virtual hep, take into account the free time you will have at your convenience.

Types of Virtual Assistants

When it comes to hiring a Virtual Assistants, you have plenty of alternatives to choose from. Hire the right one by matching the skill sets of the VAs to what you need for your business.

What are the Kinds of Virtual Assistants?
Administrative VA Specialists
There are VAs who are administrative generalists and function as online personal secretaries or executive assistants. They are very good with administrative work such as booking flights, scheduling events, follow-up on appointments, creating missives, responding to client emails and the like.

Industry Specific VAs

These VAs have specialize skill sets and experience in specific to fields like accounting, statistics, real estate and legal matters. It may truly benefit entrepreneurs who have niche businesses.

Technical VAs
Tech VAs know the ins-and-outs of computers or certain softwares. They can design websites, set-up servers and even routers from their remote location. They are also keen Internet marketers and they know their way around social media platforms- Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and online forums.

So before you hire out a VA consider what they can contribute to your company, a VA that fits well to your overall business strategy is a very sound decision on your part, this will help you cut costs in terms of business operations for the long term.