I’ve just returned from holidays, and employed a particular email strategy while I was away to prevent email hangover (the thousands of emails you have to go through) when I got back.

What did I do?

1. 1 week before I was going, I announced I was going away, and asked customers not to contact me until I got back.
2. I set up an auto responder telling people I was away, when I would get back, and that the email they sent had been deleted.
3. I didn’t actually delete the email, I used a filter to move all messages to a folder called “holiday email”

When I was away, I stayed away from the internet.

When I got home, I checked my inbox, which had no new email.  The holiday folder held all  email received while I was away.  I took a quick look through the holiday folder.  Most customers didn’t contact me, because they knew I was away.  The few that did understood I wouldn’t get the email, so didn’t start queuing up jobs requests for when I got back.

I noted the customers who did contact me, but didn’t read their emails - afterall, they weren’t actually supposed to exist!  I then deleted all the holiday emails.

Now that I am back, I have a clean slate.

I will send an email out to customers announcing I am available to work again, and will be able to handle jobs in an orderly fashion, on a first come first served basis.

It worked well.  Customers respected that I had gone on holiday, and I got to start work without anxiety of the jobs that have built up over the time I was away.

The last thing I should mention, is that I gave myself a few extra days when I got back to get things in order before I was officially back at work.

There seems to be this unwritten expectation as a soloist that you are always available to your clients.  This expectation is untrue.  Most clients understand everyone needs a holiday.  Those who don’t probably need a holiday themselves :)