10 Things Solopreneurs Need to Do With Their Email

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1. Go through your emails and find names of prospective clients who slipped away. Follow up on these. Remember ... it takes an average of 7 times for someone to 'bite'.
2. Get your ezines organized - delete some, store others. Also consider these questions: What issues brought the most response? Which issues produced the most click throughs. Remind yourself what was successful and do it again in the future.
3. Check your ezine statistics for trends. This should be done at least twice a year. This is crucial. Check the overall picture for patterns and trends. Is there more response at a certain time of year? For instance I'm a coach, and offer many e-courses. There's a great response in the fall--back-to-school time. If this is your first year of looking at the data, store what you learn to compare with next year.
4. Check your ezine statistics for patterns. Did a lot of people join in a certain month? If so, figure out why. Was it some promotion that you did, an article your wrote, or a press release that made it into the local newspaper?
5. Let your emails jog your memory. Ask yourself if you handled the person well. Was your response to them timely? Did you secure them as a client or not? What were the reasons? Did they refer people to you? Do you know how this person found you - ezine, referral, search engine, etc. Act upon your knowledge.
6. If you come upon emails that you let drop through the cracks, follow up on them. It's really never too late to thank a referral, answer a question about an article, etc. If you have a small business or practice don't be in such a hurry to delete. If you have memory enough, leave names and messages for several months til you're sure you're "through" with them. Email contacts are very hard to come by.
7. Get your email organized. Set up folders for certain subjects and people. Keep a list of names and e-addresses for at least 6 months.
8. Check our your website statistics, too. What pages get the most visits? How about click throughs? Where are the visitors coming from? If you need to, write down what you learn. Make graphs, charts, compare.
9. Refresh and update your website. As small as removing a service or product no longer available. As large as redoing the whole site. The Internet moves fast. A total redo once a year isn't too much. However, if you believe that search engines find your site by length of time on the Internet, you need to keep that in mind, too.
10. Don't forget to reward yourself for this necessary bit of housekeeping, and be sure and put into use all the market data you will have discovered in the process.