What does Clicks Talent do?
We are an influencer marketing agency. When a brand needs advertisement on social media, we supply them with relevant influences. Most of them are exclusively signed to us. And we do paid collaborations to promote the brand's products.
The Challenge
What was your email situation like before Inbox Zero?
We had loads of influencers who would put one email in their bio. And all of those emails would come to one email domain. At our peak, we were reaching close to about 10,000 emails every single day.
Having one person filter through all of those emails is absolutely painstaking. It's impossible to do effectively. Our main challenge was that a lot of these influencers were being pitched gifting and commission-only campaigns. We needed to filter those out because Clicks Talent only offers paid collaborations.
How much time were you spending on email?
24/7 because we had three agents dotted across the globe that would each handle the inbox. So the one email that was monitored 24/7.
What were your top three email pain points?
Filtering would be one. So understanding what is ROI positive for the business? A lot of the stuff were affiliate based, so filtering out what information was needed and relevant to the influencers and to our objectives as a company and as an influencer marketing agency. Low value ones as well. So as a company, we have a threshold of how much we accept for a collaboration, and many of these fell below that. The filtering of that was our biggest pain point.
Why was speed so critical for your business?
In this game, it's all about speed. There's a lot of agencies that come to us that want a one day turnover when it comes to providing talent. Now, filtering through thousands and thousands of emails on a daily basis was not feasible to do.
Had you tried other email solutions before?
We tried Fyxer, but it didn't work for us, because it wasn't flexible to our needs as a business, and the drafts were low quality. We also tried the filtering system within the Gmail and that was very hit and miss. We had maybe a 60% hit rate because there were some large brands which would offer really big budgets on a very limited number of campaigns. But then they also sent loads of campaigns which were not within budget. So as we set out the filtering, yes, it decreased our workload from reading the emails that did not hit our target. However, the big budgets were also being missed in that system, so we needed a third party to kind of help with this.
The Solution
How was your onboarding experience with Inbox Zero?
Smooth for me. The videos, which Inbox Zero kind of sets out, and the templates were splitting for, say, newsletters. It was very easy to see how the rules and the prompts kind of worked. So it was very intuitive on how to add further on.
What percentage of AI drafted responses do you send as-is versus edit?
When it comes to AI responses, about 80%.
How effective is the automation for your specific workflow?
The form responses are working 80% effectively for automatic responses. Over the weekend, when we just sent out the replies, we had 10 people who were handled automatically - they didn't need any questions or human intervention at all.
The Results
How many hours per week do you save now?
20 hours a day. Let's go conservative and say 60 hours a week.
How has faster email response time impacted your business?
100%, because we turned on the tap for automatic outreach, and it would be impossible to reply to close to about 200 emails a day, on top of what we're already managing as a business.
Without Inbox Zero, this would be impossible.
What unexpected benefits have you discovered?
Accurate labeling. So when we were doing things the way before, there were multiple labels. However, we're very easy to prioritize on the needs to reply, handle a call, signed. We're able to very easily classify where our attention needs to go at specific moments.
How has this enabled your company's growth?
We've grown rapidly from 20 to 50 employees over the past few months. I think over the past two weeks we've hired about 10 people. Without Inbox Zero handling our email volume, this growth wouldn't have been possible while maintaining our service quality.
How has Inbox Zero impacted your work-life balance?
From a team member: "It's reduced my stress, especially out of hours. Because it funnels the information that I need for very easy to read in the morning. So then it allows me to actually work a specific time, and I think that's an unexpected benefit that I had."
What would happen if you had to go back to managing email without Inbox Zero?
We have to hire more staff. I think at this rate, it's such a benefit that the workload that it's taken off our plate and we've managed to increase our workload in different areas, we wouldn't be able to reduce again, we would need to hire more people.
We don't exactly want to hire someone as a full time job, just reply to emails, copy and pasting.
Looking Forward
How are you planning to scale with Inbox Zero?
At the time of the interview, AB was planning for the inbox to grow from roughly 1,350 emails per day toward 4,000-6,000 emails daily by the end of the year - all without hiring additional staff for email management. Current Inbox Zero usage is better described in monthly processed volume: in a recent 30-day period, Inbox Zero processed 11,000+ emails across Clicks Talent's connected accounts.
If a colleague asked if Inbox Zero is worth it, what would you tell them?
Absolutely, 100%. The time savings alone make it worthwhile. It's like having an assistant that never sleeps.
Final Thoughts
What's one word to describe life with Inbox Zero?
Efficient.
Is there anything else you'd like to share about your transformation?
Time saving. It's all based around the same.
We've managed to increase our workload in different areas - thanks to the time saved from email automation.
