Online Communities | Articles

As your site becomes established and more popular, you will naturally receive a larger number of emails on a daily basis.

An excessive number of emails however, can result in you spending all of your time dealing with them rather than working on creating content and further developing your community.

Reduce the number of emails you receive

The last thing you want or need when you open up your inbox in the morning is a mailbox that has been overwhelmed.

You should always reply to each and every email you receive, but this can be time consuming if you are receiving an unmanageable number every day.

How to reduce the number of received emails

You should be able to identify common themes in the emails you are receiving. They are likely to be asking you similar questions to other emails you are being sent.

Instead of having to type out the same reply each and every time, address the issue by publishing advice on your site or by improving your site in a way that addresses these common complaints or issues.

Every site should have a ‘help’ or a ‘FAQ’ section. These are helpful for you as they reduce the number of emails you receive asking you the same question and they improve usability for your site’s visitors who are able to seek help and find immediate answers.

Remember - web users are lazy. They don’t want to have to hunt around for the help pages. Make them prominent. They don’t want to have to write you an email asking for help either, so make your advice sections relevant and keep them updated.

Always tweak, update and improve your site

Once your site is published, your web development journey has only just begun. You still need to constantly improve your site.

As new emails come in requesting information or advice that is not covered in your help section, reply to the emails then address these issues on your site by way of improvements or by inclusion in your help section.

Never hide … always reply

Never hide from your users by not publishing details of how they can contact you. For a community to succeed, your users need to be able to trust you. They can’t do this if you aren’t even willing to disclose how they can get in touch.

You can dramatically reduce the number of emails you receive but remain approachable and easily contactable by paying attention to the commonalities amongst the emails you are getting.

Identify these commonalities, and address them. You will be grateful for it, and so will your users.

Are you overwhelmed with emails? What do you do to reduce them? Have you any additional advice on reducing their quantity? Whatever your experience or opinions, leave a comment below and share them!