The longer an email goes unanswered, the greater the chance that your prospect will form an UNFAVORABLE opinion of your business.

Has This Happened to You?

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a moment. You visit a web site and get excited because the site makes it clear (especially if I designed it!) that they have exactly what you are looking for. You have a question, though, so you send an email on a Monday morning and wait with anticipation for a reply…

4 hours later, there’s nothing in your inbox. At 5 PM, you check again, just in case…nothing. You check before bedtime, on the chance the business owner works crazy hours…nothing…

You wake up Tuesday morning and check again…nothing…and your irritation begins to build. You check again that night…nothing…more irritated.

You check again on Wednesday and Thursday…nothing and nothing. You think to yourself, “What’s wrong with these people!”

Finally, an answer arrives on Friday, but you had already moved on to a competitor. You called a similar business on Thursday afternoon (their website didn’t offer an email option), got your answer and made a purchase.

The sad fact is, the scenario I just described happens all the time! When I made a commitment with my lingerie business to answer emails within 1 business hour, customers were shocked (they told me so) at the speed of my replies and they rewarded me by making a purchase and becoming a loyal customer.

Let Your Customers Know When to Expect a Reply

Unless you’re ready to commit to checking AND replying to your emails a minimum of once a day (preferably every few hours), either don’t advertise your email address OR let your customers know when they can expect a reply (and put this information next to the email address).

The answer is this online service, which is free for small accounts:

• Email Center Pro

It works like any online email reader, but it has features for multiple users. You can assign emails to certain employees, monitor the whole conversation and create canned replies that everyone can use.

You’ll get all the same benefits of using GMail (access from any computer, central storage, search, etc.) and you won’t have to deal with another email program. You can choose to send mail from any of your linked accounts and GMail is smart enough to choose the correct account when you click the Reply button.

To get started, click Settings in the upper right corner of your GMail page, then click Accounts and Import. Look for the “Send mail as” and “Check mail using POP3″ sections and click the “Learn more” links for instructions.

When you let an online service (like Google’s GMail) handle your email, you can read/write from any computer and your messages are stored on Google’s servers.