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Published November 08th, 2016 by

6 Challenges in Email Management Faced by Businesses

6 Challenges in Email Management Faced by Businesses

Once a novelty, yet remained robust as years went by, the email stood to become the most effective and widely used communication medium in businesses as we know today. Its development changed the way businesses engage with their customers, their network, and with their employees. Its electronic nature enables it to be archived neatly, and be searched accurately. It is flexible in holding as much information within its body, and can carry attachments to support its content. It is simple, straightforward and fast – features that made it a reliable communication channel suitable for businesses. Now that many businesses are adopting it as its main communication medium, there is an increased demand for email management tools.

Emails not just provide the familiarity of traditional business correspondence, but its straightforwardness and expanded of features made it the most preferred medium of online communication for businesses. In this fast paced, ever-changing world, its technology was able to keep up with the advancements, especially in modern communication. And nothing, at least for now, has ever surpassed its functionalities. Its strength lies on the fact that it continues to evolve and expand its usability – not only in communication, but also in sales and marketing strategies, and in collaboration among employees and remote teams.

Benefits of Email in Businesses

The main benefits of using email in business correspondence are its simplicity, speed and convenience. With these robust features, it is not surprising that businesses were able to expand its functionality to help them achieve their other goals. According to the email statistics report for 2015-2019 released by the technology market research firm Radicati Group, it is expected that about one-third of the world population will be using emails by the year 2019. Today, we can see that there is no stopping for emails to continue being an effective solution used by businesses, regardless of being a startup, a small player, or an enterprise.

Aside from the features mentioned, using emails brings a lot of advantages and benefits for businesses in many aspects:

  1. Efficiency in communication

There is increased efficiency in communicating when using emails. Messages are able to be personalized and expounded as pleased, and be sent with attachments to support its content. Conversations can move quickly, messages can be archived and searched. It is flexible to varying degrees of professionalism when it comes to messaging. Messages can also be sent to multiple recipients at once, making it a huge time saver and productivity tool.

  1. Cost efficient

Sending emails is essentially lower in cost than using postages or regular mails. One can always have access to a number of free email services, especially those small businesses that utilize smaller budgets. Its many functionalities and everyday participation in regular business operations make it more cost effective as time passes. Basically, its speed translates to cost savings too, as far as employee productivity is concerned. Email marketing is also an affordable medium to use when sending out newsletters for a more personalized and targeted approach.

  1. Accessibility

Its popularity, and the number of web services available in the internet makes it one of the most convenient solutions to use. It is also easily accessible due to many kinds of devices that can connect to the internet nowadays like desktops, smartphones and tablets. This kind of accessibility translates to greater flexibility and mobility for business people utilizing it.

  1. Used as a marketing medium

As mentioned, email can be used as a marketing strategy by businesses that is not only effective, but also inexpensive. It makes use of relevant content that is also engaging and compelling at the same time, for leads to respond positively to offers and promotions. It can also be used to promote other marketing and company endeavors like social media channels, website, events and launches.

  1. Collaboration

The effects of globalization lead many businesses in utilizing remote teams who collaborate for a certain project or company engagement. Email is a useful tool to complement project management and collaboration software which can help the team to communicate well for effective information exchange. Having a robust communication system helps businesses streamline their workflows, which enables them to be more effective in achieving its goals.

Email Management Challenges and Opportunities

Coordination and correspondence are critical for businesses to be able to relay effectively its objectives and goals within its organization, its brand message to its customers, as well as to promote goodwill among its network or industry. Now that businesses are dealing with more complex processes and met with stricter project requirements, the need for a diverse and strong communication system is being emphasized.

Emails are simple to use, and easily accessible due to the proliferation of mobile devices available. However, it is not without challenges, especially now that the market behavior is shifting and requirements are getting more specific. As the company grows, it also has to deal with higher volumes of emails every day, making the use of free email services inefficient anymore.

How to do email management that works? First, here are some of the most prevalent challenges that modern businesses deal when it comes to email management:

  1. Security standards and regulatory compliance

Now that the vast majority of businesses the email as its principal communication medium, we expect of emails exchanges to take place every day. Alongside, there is an increasing volume of information being transmitted in the internet, which sometimes contain critical data that must be protected at all costs. Thus, a number of email network standards and regulatory compliances must be complied to in order to maximize the advantage of using email.

Aside from being a medium of correspondence, emails can also serve as a centralized database for company data. And to be effective with this function, its system and server must be robust enough to retain data for a long time. It should also preserve the integrity of the data by not allowing it to be subjected to situations that may compromise it. And it should also adopt the top-of-its-class encryption/decryption technology to ensure that information exchange is secured, as well as its storage and preservation.

  1. Electronic records discovery

Further maximizing the use of email as a source of company data and information may lead to the need to have a strong electronic records discovery measures to take place earlier. No one can predict when a lawsuit may be filed, a retiring or resigning employee that would need support for transitioning or the government requesting for records. To avoid being pressured and to resort to more expensive electronic data discovery services to take place, it is best to address it early on.

  1. Expensive audits

Extending the need for regulatory compliance is the price tag it entails as well. Audits can be painful in terms of resources and time spent to comply with accuracy and efficiency. Provision of audit trails is laborious itself, and may require legal compliance as well, which is by the way, is also expensive and requires you to manifest your presence in the court.

  1. Tremendous growth in email data and volume

With the growth of a company lies a direct correlation to the amount of data it processes. When it comes to email, a tremendous growth of its volume and frequency may render the use of free email services ineffective to support it. Having an email management software and large-capacity email servers may introduce additional costs to the company.

Before choosing the right email management service provider, make sure to have an accurate volume of email you expect to process, as well as the functionalities you cannot compromise. It is also more cost efficient to get a scalable solution, to cater to your growth effectively without affecting the quality of its service.

  1. Legal implications and intellectual property rights

When your business process more emails, there is a greater possibility that it contains legally binding documents and intellectual properties that should be properly archived and stored. Running down a massive number of emails to track down these sensitive and valuable files may take time to do. Having an email management tool to aid you in organizing emails and attachments in the first place may minimize the stress and complexity of the work.

  1. Changing technology landscape

Constantly changing technologies may cause you to migrate your emails to other servers, which is not only expensive, but also painstakingly time consuming. It also introduces risks in losing precious files and conversations in the process.

It is best to choose an email management service that is scalable and can accommodate shifts and trends within the email landscape.

Benefits of Using Tools for Email Management

The technology of email is brought a notch higher by using a software to manage it more effectively. The top email management tools increase the productivity of your agents to enhance its customer services. Here are the key benefits of email management system for your business:

  1. It enables your business to achieve the benefits of tracking emails in a more efficient way. It allows conversations flow in a single thread, and associated attachments filed in an organized manner for easy retrieval.
  1. It has built-in email templates and automated response system which you can easily activate to help you save time in answering commonly asked questions. You can also schedule group emails to be sent automatically, saving you more time which can be used for carrying out core tasks instead.
  1. It can be integrated with your service ticketing system to process job orders quickly. Automating it can further improve this benefit.
  1. Its integrated analytics is useful in providing you with reports containing insight about a variety of aspects of your business like what kind of inquiry you typically receive, how your customers engage to you, or the areas you can improve on. According to the 2015 State of Analytics Study conducted by Salesforce, marketers cited email as its major source of data analytics with 41 percent use the data coming from marketing performance.
  1. Having a smart software with a number of useful features translates to great savings for your business by allowing you to be more productive with your core tasks. An efficient email management system can take care of your customer services while giving you useful information on how you can improve your products.

Email management tool reviews from CrowdReviews.com can provide you with useful customer insights on the different software and tool providers you may encounter in the market.

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