How to Never Forget to Follow Up Even When You’re Overwhelmed

You’ve had a very productive day.  It’s around midnight, and you’re laying in bed, just drifting off.  You are just drifting off to important thoughts, like “Why do giraffes have those two furry horns on their heads?”  That’s when it hits you.

Your biggest client sent you an email just around noon, and you completely forgot to respond.

Email is the backbone of your business and is still the most popular means of communication between clients and business owners.  The sheer volume of emails that are received by business owners daily, however, means that to be effective, entrepreneurs think they should camp out in front of their inbox, waiting to respond to each individual message as it comes in.

In a perfect (but inefficient) world, that would be possible; but in the real world, we should be far too busy to do much more than process our emails once or twice a day.  Working from home, while it is everyone’s ultimate dream, means that you are the one responsible for every business-driven aspect of your life.  Phone calls, meetings, research, marketing, product delivery; the challenges of working at home can seem almost overwhelming.

Get Help

With all the things you have on your plate it’s easy to forget to respond to emails.  It’s so common, in fact, that an entire market of automated email responses and reminders has evolved around it.  Of all the automated email platforms out there, I love Boomerang.

Boomerang is a plug in for Gmail and Outlook that takes the guesswork out of responding to emails; “Did I or didn’t I?” is a thing of the past.  Boomerang is the smartest automated email response app currently on the market. It will make you look like a pro, whether you are just starting your business or are, in fact, a pro.

Most business owners are fantastic at setting up initial outreach emails.  We are full of motivation and energy to make that first contact.  Where we begin to falter is our follow-through.  They say “the fortune is in the follow-up”, and while that’s true, it’s hard to remember and easy to make mistakes. While you could keep a list somewhere to track who you followed-up with and who you still have to send a friendly reminder to, you can let boomerang do this for you automatically.

With an inbox inundated with emails every day, it’s a chore to sort through them.  They begin to pile up and somewhere within that heap of ignored mail is an important prospective client answering your introductory message.   Emails are the fastest, most direct route to make contact, establish business relationships, track your efficiency, and ultimately, make that sale.

But you can’t make the sale if you can’t keep up with your emails, no matter how overwhelmed you are.

Boomerang is a versatile, highly customizable automation tool that allows you to schedule emails, follow-ups and more from a very user-friendly interface.

My Favorite Boomerang Features

Schedule emails to go out at the best times

Boomerang allows you to write an email and set the time you’d like it sent.  It can be in a couple of hours, a few days, or a specific date and time.  Write the email while you’re thinking of it, schedule it to be sent later, then forget about it.  Most of us are already experts in the “forget about it” aspect, so Boomerang remembers for you.

This is a necessary tool for sending:

• thank-you emails (Thank you for meeting with me today…)
• follow-up emails (Just touching base after our conversation last week…)
• introductory emails (It was wonderful meeting you today.  Let me explain how my service can help you…)
• and more

The scheduling also lets you take advantage of optimal times for your target to receive your emails.  Studies have shown that most people read emails first thing in the morning, or around lunchtime.  If your email isn’t sitting near the top of their list during these times, it may be overlooked.  Boomerang’s scheduler also allows you to burn the midnight oil, scheduling emails to arrive first thing in the morning although you wrote them late the night before.  This leaves a much better impression on your clients and is a perfect way to handle time zone differences.

Keep track of important personal notifications

Some emails we receive are important, but may require research before you can draft a response.  Chances are, you can’t drop everything right now and give it the attention it deserves immediately.  Boomerang allows you to re-deliver emails to yourself at a time that is convenient for you to keep you on top of your game.   This feature also allows you to track your sent emails and redeliver them to you at set times to remind you to reach out to your clients, helping you to effortlessly maintain your business relationships.

Follow-up when someone hasn’t responded

All the emails in the world aren’t worth a thing if your prospective clients aren’t opening them or responding.  Messages with no response after a selected time frame “boomerang” back to your inbox for follow-up.  Using Boomerang means you’ll never have another prospective client fall through the cracks again. The fortune really is in the follow-up.

Boomerang can even auto-send your pre-drafted follow-ups without any action from you.

Pause your inbox

I’ve been at Inbox Zero for a while now and I’m able to resist “checking my emails”, knowing that I’ve scheduled a time to read and respond to my emails later in the day.

But if you’re just starting out with this, it can be overwhelming and distracting. This is where the “pause inbox” functionality comes in. You hit the pause button and you will not see any new emails arriving. This is great if you want to take a break from your inbox, or if you’re processing a lot of (old) emails and don’t want to be distracted by new ones (or replies to those you just sent out) coming in.

Whenever you feel up for it again, you just hit the resume button and the floodgates are open again. At least it gave you some breathing space in between, right?

The Respondable AI email editor

Boomerang also offers a unique feature called Respondable, which is an editor for your emails.  It uses AI to help you set the right tone, minimize the length of your message, clarify it for maximum readability, and evaluate it for the likelihood of response.  It rates your messages on several key features, such as politeness, positivity, subjectivity, and reading level of your text.  Respondable tries to estimate the likelihood that you’ll receive a reply, making the follow-up hopefully even unnecessary.

Keep on Top of your Emails While Staying Sane

Whether you’re the one that’s manning your inbox, or if you have an assistant that monitors emails for you, you’ll definitely benefit from a more efficient inbox. An automated email app like Boomerang cuts down on the time you need to spend responding to emails and can be used with other time management techniques such as task batching or timeboxing to really manage your time, or that of an assistant, more efficiently.

If you are looking for someone to help you take care of your inbox, create your FreeUp account today and submit a request. You’ll get introduced to a pre-vetted freelancer with the experience to handle your specific needs, and be able to start working with them within just a couple of days.

Kristof is a time management and productivity coach for freelancers, consultants, and other solopreneurs. He helps them to organize their businesses so they become more productive and earn more with less stress. He publishes a lot of free resources on Habitgrowth.com to help you become more productive straight away.