Answering email

I get a lot of email - it does go through phases but there's generally enough of it to keep me very occupied. As a result, I also send a lot of email - in reply, nature of my work and general communication. My life (work, sport, social, friends and family) has been very much running through email since early 1995 - that's 15 years now.

As the volume of email has increased over the years, I've become very 'controlled' in my approach; I try to send emails to people the way I'd like them to be sent to me.

Sometimes, when I'm just saying hi, I don't ask questions. This is an undemanding email that is just making contact but not expecting a reply or responses.

I aim to confine a topic to each email - not multiple themes in an email - labeled with an appropriate subject heading (very important!).

I also try to reply properly to emails to limit back and forth volleys; if I can solve a problem or attend to an equiry first time, I won't have to deal with another five emails from the same person around the same topic. With this in mind, I try to ask the right questions when I email people.

I also try to whack through my inbox everyday so that I don't start the next day with left-over emails. Often I'll just reply with "Done", confirming that I've read their email and completed the task. Very rarely one slips though, but I'll usually catch it when I sweep through my inbox to cleanse every few weeks.

It's the complicated and demanding emails that I find most challenging; those that ask a lot of questions... most of these are AR-related. Advice on how to find sponsors, how to get into the sport, what clubs to join, training advice... people, please... just phone me, use Google or give it some thought yourself. I don't have time (nor the inclination) to write long replies to this stuff - so I don't. Most of it is on http://www.ar.co.za/ anyway.

While looking for an image to accompany this post, I found this useful article "Yes, you can stay on top of email (productivity tip)" by Michael Hyatt.

On a related topic - being in media work it is amazing how many editors (many, not all), producers and such never bother even to reply with "OK, thanks". Nothing, nada. For people who are contacted by media and the public, I'm sure they get lots of email. And there is certainly a ton of useful content that they miss. The problem is easily solved by hiring a wannabe-student, someone who wants a career in media (tv, radio, PR, magazines), to reply-to and log emails every afternoon. Pay them student rates and they score great in-house experience. It's a matter of creating a spreadsheet and pulling out the senders name, contact details and topic of the email. How much easier for the producer to look through a neat list than a scary, overloaded inbox!

Mmmm...