E-mail, a wonderful communication tool is also the greatest challenge to manage. Hundreds of mails pouring in from friends, forums, business associates, customers and subscribed newsletters and spam mail with enticing subject headers.
Just imagine reading even 50 mails a day. It would take two and half hours even if you just spend 3 minutes on an average per mail. Replying to five to six important mails a day would take another hour at 10 minutes a mail.
Spending up to 4 hours a day on mails may leave you with little time to do more important work. So how do you manage the clutter of mails
Creating mail folders
The first thing on setting up a new mail account is to create folders for storing important mails. You can create folders such as personal mails, business mails, priority response, newsletters etc. This will help you sort the important, urgent and casual mails and prioritize your email activities.
Spam and bulk mails
Most mail programs have very strong spam filters and they are improving by the day. This automatically filters your mail to bulk folders based on key words and whether the mail address is in your address book among various other criteria. As a rule never read any bulk mail however enticing the subject heading may be. Just scan the headings to check whether any recognizable mail has been sent to the bulk mail folder and delete the rest ruthlessly. If you get into even opening a few mails your mail time management takes a toss for the worst.
Set up temporary mail boxes
Many users have temporary needs for receiving huge amount of mails. This could be due to inviting applications for a position, submitting to search engines and running a promo, ad campaign or site submissions to search engines etc. Set up a temporary mail address and delete the mailbox once the purpose is achieved. Most mail services now offer this service as regular feature.
Passwords
Forgetting the login and passwords are a major time waster for all mail users. Keep a separate folder for passwords and site sign ups so that you need not request the passwords every time you need to login to a site.
Email Access
Dont open your emails too frequently or use it as a time filler. There is phenomenon called entrainment, which to explain in simple terms is a feeling of speed and fast paced action provided by emails and net surfing and is a major source of addiction. This also gives you a feeling of having done a lot of work. Have a predefined time schedule for checking and replying to mails.
Unsubscribe
When you feel a service or newsletter is no longer required simply unsubscribe. You may subscribe again when the need is felt.
Finally, email is a very valuable tool. Not managed well you could have thousands of mails sitting in your mail box creating huge confusion and loss of valuable time. How well you manage it will decide how effective you will be in your communication and productivity.
R.G. Srinivasan is is a certified trainer and a management consultant. Check out his webpages at
If you design kitchens, is another kitchen designer your competition Most likely not. And the sooner you can position and modify your marketing strategy against your real competition, the sooner you will start to see more business come through the door. So Who Really Is Your Competition The answer to that is always--Never the most obvious. So lets take the example of the kitchen designer. Having decided that another kitchen designer isnt his competition, he now has to decide who is his real competition.
His Real Competition Could Be A Car Salesman
Is this for real How can a car salesman be a kitchen designers competition Lets analyse this more carefully. A kitchen and a car are both fighting for the same thing-- The householders limited budget.
If the kitchen designer, were able to convince a couple that a kitchen is more important than a new car (which he could easily do if there was a foodie around), he now has a better chance of them dropping the car in favour of the kitchen.
The Advantage Of This Method Of Positioning
The most obvious advantage is that youre not losing any current customers. All your past advertising is bringing in the customers that are looking for kitchens anyway.
What it does do however, is bring in a new lot of customers that would never have thought about kitchens, if you hadnt implanted it in their minds. Effectively, you have both, customers who are looking for kitchens as well as customers who are forfeiting their new cars in favour of new kitchens.
How Your Re-Positioning Can Help You Focus
We had a client who ran a laundromat. Her current customers were people who did not have washing machines. Obviously, her business went up and down based on the season and on her customers limited budget. We got her to refocus her marketing strategy on a new target-- Customers who had washing machines.
These customers had the money, but no time. By deciding that her real competition was time she decided to target people who had limited time instead.
As a result, she was now targeting busy people while other laundromats were targeting people with washing. This positioning actually helped the laundromat stand out from the rest of the competition.
How The Laundromat Did A Full 180
This re-positioning did a couple of things for them. One, it helped them focus on their target audience. Consequently, they changed their name from just XYZ Laundromat to Bizzie Buggers.
It was catchy and bang on target. It also now meant that busy customers (with the money), were more likely to stop over and drop their washing. Plus they had the regular customers walking through the door anyway.
What You Need To Do
Sit down and write who your immediate competition could be. Then write down what your business is really up against. Here are some examples.
These arent necessarily your right targets but they help you see things in a different light and help you determine who your real competition could possibly be.
Cartoonist= Photographer
Computer Salesman= Filing Cabinet
Car Dealer= Expensive Restaurant Meals
Psychotactics.All Rights Reserved.
Written By: Sean DSouza
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If you would like to learn more about the way the human brain works, and how customers make buying decisions, go to http://www.5000bc.com
Theres a vast library of free articles and information on topics as varied as copywriting, small business ideas, public speaking, sales conversion, psychological tactics, branding and other marketing related subjects. Go to http://www.5000bc.com today. Youll be amazed at what you find there.
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Sean has developed a system called Psycho Tactics. PsychoTactics unlocks the working of the human brain and radically tweaks the way you think and act about your business. This results in clarity of thought and greater profits.Today, Sean is constantly teaching small business- How they too can do the same
He does this through his websites