If you are like a lot of entrepreneurs, your email has become an unmanageable mess with a flurry of new emails pouring in every day. Promotional emails, marketing messages, new discounts from that store you visited that one time, and newsletters from a bevy of websites you visited a long time ago that promised you things like a "FREE GUIDE TO INCREASE REVENUE 10,000%" are all flooding into your inbox on a daily basis. Now don't get me wrong, maybe you want to get some of these emails. After all, it's always good to know when your favorite store is having a sale, right? But ask yourself, are all these other emails really necessary? Do you still need to be getting emails from Bill "The Big Boss" Business Builder? Are you missing emails that you might actually want to get? Like a potential new customer, or someone who is trying to help your business?

The answer is easy. Just unsubscribe.

Yep, I know, it sounds too easy, and that's because it is. Many people who harvest email addresses from their website visitors are going to cringe at that advice, but it's necessary if you want to maintain a distraction-free zone of communication that keeps you focused on addressing valuable emails from clients and other business associates. By unsubscribing from all the fluff that shows up in your inbox, you'd be amazed at how easy it might be to respond to your clients. You know, the people who are actually trying to get in touch with you to GIVE you money. Instead of that important email that needs to be addressed getting shoved down towards the bottom of your inbox, to be lost and forgotten, it is still in the here-and-now, literally in your face reminding you that it needs to be answered.

Typically, all you need to do is scroll down to the bottom of an email newsletter, and you should see (likely in really tiny words) a link that says "Unsubscribe.” 

You might be saying, "But Steve, I like the content in some of those emails! Don't take them away from me!" And that's great! But a good way to keep getting your daily digest after deleting your subscriptions is to go to their website or blog instead.  Many of the people who are sending you messages are taking the content from their website, putting it in an email, and blasting it to your inbox. For the people who you still want to hear from, just bookmark their website/blog and then you get to decide when it's a good time for you to hear what they have to say.

"But what about the email-only offers and information?!"

I have an answer for that too!  Get a secondary email address that you can use to funnel all this modern-day junk mail to and keep your main email clean and clear! I'm not saying that there isn't a single newsletter out there that you shouldn't have sent to your email, I'm saying that when left unchecked, they can really get in the way, slowing you and your business down. 

With all the other distractions small business owners have, it's important that one of today’s most prevalent forms of communication not be one of them.

Steve Payerle is the Founder of Bytesurance, an organization helping small business owners get the performance, protection, and peace of mind they deserve from their technology so they stay confident and in control of their business.  Specializing in budding small businesses, Steve provides end-to-end technical relief and strategic advice to help small business owners save money, increase revenue, and streamline their business through effective use of IT.

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