Have you ever wondered how you managed to accumulate so many emails in your Inbox? If you ever looked at Outlook or Gmail and wondered, "How am I ever going to catch up on reading and responding to all of these messages?", then keep reading.Imagine for a moment that when you go out for your morning commute that there are no traffic laws, no divider lines, no signs for directions, no red-lights or speed limits to control the safe flow of traffic. What would happen? Chaos! The fact is that we are taught the rules and must prove that we have a good understanding of the laws before we are issued a driver's license. Without this process and the agencies that patrol and enforce the laws, our roads and highways would probably get jammed up and over-loaded, just like your e-mail inbox.
As traffic has increased on the web and more users have turned to e-mail to communicate, the amount of messages in the inbox has become harder to manage. The problem is that we built and began using the technology, without establishing some basic rules of the road between the other e-motorists.
MPC has created a set of easy-to-follow, electronic rules of the road called
DARTS©, an acronym for Delete, Archive, Reply, Task, Sync. These are the five options most commonly exercised when a message enters a user's inbox.
DARTS™ IN ACTION
DELETEWhen a new message arrives in the inbox, odds are that a large percentage are promotional or advertising in nature, so we "Delete" or "Archive" these messages for future reference. For clients that are experiencing extreme inbox overload (500+ Message), we recommend unsubscribing from all lists and RSS feeds until your Email Inbox is under control. Since there is a good chance that you are also receiving unnecessary emails from your friends, colleagues, and team members, it is a good idea to have a plan to teach those contacts how to best communicate with you.
A great way to redirect all of that non-business communication from your Outlook inbox is to request that your contacts join you on Facebook and encourage them to communicate with you there. It should be noted that your Facebook account settings should not automatically email you the newsfeed updates from your FB friends.
ARCHIVEFor the messages that are important to keep, but require no action, it's best to "Archive" the message by linking it to the sender, contact and/or transaction to whom or which the message is most directly related. Each archived message should automatically include a time and date stamp. You should also consider the subject line. Does it accurately describe the content of the email? Edit the subject line to make finding it later, easier. This will also provide the CRM user (or a team of users) a system to track all messages related to contacts, projects, transaction, etc. Tier One CRM systems allow users to mass archive multiple messages from a single sender or mass archive a series of emails about specific project.
REPLYFor messages that require a response, we recommend that you edit the subject line if necessary and it's best to "Archive" the message into your CRM by linking it to the sender, contact and/or transaction to whom or which the message is most directly related. Follow the rules of the road and do not cc other contacts on your reply message unnecessarily. The members of your team should always be able to access the message from the CRM.
TASKFor messages that require an action on the part of the CRM user, best practices dictate that the e-mail be archived into your CRM by linking it to the sender, contact and/or transaction to whom or which the message is most directly related. This should be followed by the creation of a task, series of tasks (project), or the launch of an automated workflow that contains a series of tasks assigned to multiple users.
Each task should contain a due date, subject line, detailed instructions, priority and status. If the CRM offers an email notification, use sparingly. A good use of the email notification option would be when one or more of the team members is mobile, but is able to receive email on their iPhone or Blackberry.
SYNCHRONIZATION (SYNC)CRM solutions may offer manual and automated SYNC options and both should be used based on individual needs. The primary benefit of SYNC is to connect multiple devices and contact management systems for continuity and to eliminate double and triple data entry. Advances in synchronization allow users to stay connected with wired and wireless option. Look for flexibility and device compatibility when considering CRM solutions and the devices that will be able to support it.
If you would like to see an example of DARTS™ IN ACTION, check out the web video at http://www.mpc-co.com/blog/2009/10/darts-basics.html________________________________________________________________________
mike gulitz | mpc | office 888.771.7672 x 3 | mobile 858.837.2113 | mike@mpc-co.com
