AJA-Online

When the Internet first started, email programs could only handle text messages. Plus, the access to the Internet was so slow that downloading a HTML email newsletter was unacceptable for most recipients due to extra time and fees.

But the computer and Internet technologies are more and more advancing, and a simple text email message is losing popularity. Nowadays, HTML messages have come to the fore. Almost all email programs are designed to display HTML emails. This means designing a HTML email newsletter is becoming essential for successful email marketing.

If you want to have more attractive and exclusive HTML email newsletter, you can request the newsletter design from some newsletter design agency, or you can download newsletter design software available in the website, and following its tutorials get the newsletter done. Of course, if you want better results, the professionalism is required. At the fixed price newsletter designers can create various newsletter templates for you. If you find a design that you like, they will make any changes to it for you, to finally get the newsletter design you are looking for.

You should also decide on the newsletter format you will use. The email newsletter layout is also as important as the newsletter design. Layout is the position of the different elements of the email newsletter so they go well together and enhance the value of the newsletter to the readers.

If you are going to design a HTML newsletter by yourself, most modern email newsletter applications include an HTML editor that is as easy to use as your word processor. You simply type in your text and most of the time it’s formatted for you.

Using the basic HTML editor features, you can play around with the font color and size, use bold or underlined text, emphasize the most important elements of the text with bullets, insert pictures into the message, and create hyperlinks. Those are the simplest HTML features that you can use to create more appealing HTML email newsletter.

The important thing to remember is that there is a variety of email applications out there and they render HTML format differently. This means that the same HTML email may display nicely in one email program and may not in another one. Dont forget about web-based email applications. They have their peculiarities too.

For example, if you insert an image from your local disk into the message, this image will be seen as an attachment in a web-based email service. To prevent this, host the images on your web server and include the links to them into your email. Thus, the pictures will be automatically loaded when the recipient opens your message in a web mail application.

There are, however, common rules that apply to a good HTML design. You can follow them to get your HTML email newsletter to be displayed as you expect it.

1. Set the Width to 500-600 Pixels

Since your HTML email will be displayed in the email clients preview pane which is a small part of the available screen, you should design the emails about 600 pixels in width. For example, when MS Outlook Express is maximized to a full screen, the preview pane is only about 440 pixels wide.

2. Keep HTML Formatting Simple

Since email applications can distort the HTML message in the different ways, you need to keep your email design nice and simple. Avoid complicated layouts, too many tables, and tables with too many rows and columns. Plus, a complex HTML newsletter will take a longer time to open, and you recipients won’t appreciate it.

3. Dont use Flash (JavaScript, Movies, and Other Stuff) in HTML Email

You can send the HTML emails with Flash files in them, but the majority of your recipients wont be able to view them. This is because only Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail use the operating systems built-in browsers to render their email. Plus, most people have anti-virus and anti-spam applications that block the code used to embed Flash files. Flash was built for the web browser and that’s where it should stay.

4. Dont relay too much on CSS in HTML Email

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is nice for websites, but dont relay too much in it with HTML email. For instance, you shouldnt expect DIVs to work. And definitely avoid CSS positioning it wont work. Use old-fashioned tags for your layouts in HTML email, and only use CSS for simple font formatting and colors. Always design your email so that it looks decently if someone removes your CSS. Before you send your HTML email, delete the CSS and see how it displays.

If you are not a professional HTML designer, you can search for ready email templates on the Internet. There are various template packs available for purchase. A good source is here http://www.hotemailtemplates.com. This site offers free and commercial HTML email templates. The template package also includes the source template file so that you can edit the design if you wish.

A nice idea is to test your HTML email design with as many different email applications and accounts as possible. Before sending your newsletter out to the world, youll want to check how your email design behaves under different scenarios because there are lots of email applications, and they all handle HTML email differently.

Author is a technical expert associated with development of email marketing utilities: Free Bulk Email Software. Did you find those tips useful? You can learn a lot more here Download HTML Email Newsletter Guide

Author: Jilia Gulevich
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital pipeline

In the course of my work with people online, I often run into a
wall of confusion when I speak of the different types of email
available. People will ask help with their email accounts. I
always ask, “do you have a web mail account or a POP3 email
account?”

In my mind, it has always been a rather simple question. Yet,
the truth is that the answer is not so simple to most Internet
users. If you are scratching your head trying to figure out
just what I am talking about, you will be able to answer the
question without confusion by the time you finish reading this
article.

Real quickly, I would like to outline for you the distinctions
between the two types of email so that you can begin to
understand the differences between the two formats.

I will begin with POP3 since that is the one that is often the
most confusing and least known type.

POP3 email accounts require a piece of software called an email
reader in order to send and receive email. Common applications
that serve as email readers are: Netscape Messenger, Outlook
Express, Outlook, AOL email, Pegasys, Eudora, Juno and a few
others.

While email readers are often bundled with Internet browsers,
they are actually a separate piece of software. With a reader,
when you are ready to check your email, you start your email
software. Once it opens, click a button on your toolbar to
download your email and wait for your email to download to
your computer so that you can begin reading it.

When you are ready to create a new email to send to others, you
have the options of Reply, Forward, or New Message. Which ever
method you use, you must click the correct button inside your
software to create the new message.

Advantages of POP3 email:

- You can read your mail without being logged onto the Internet.

- You may create new messages to send to others without being
logged onto the Internet.

- All messages are stored on your hard drive on your own
computer.

- There are often no size limits on the email you send or
receive.

- There is not a maximum size on your mailbox, except as
determined by the size of your hard drive.

- There is no advertising when you read your email unless you
are using an Adware email reader like Eudora.

- Opening attachments is a quick and painless process.

Disadvantages of POP3 email:

- Opening attachments is a quick and painless process, unless
the attachment has a virus payload in it.

- If you have JavaScript enabled in your email reader, you might
be target of rogue JavaScript embedded in an email.

- All messages are stored on your system, and privacy disappears
when someone sits down at your machine. Even if your email
reader is password protected, it is often possible for someone
who knows what they are doing to read your email by using
another application to open your mail folders.

- All messages are stored on your hard drive eating up what is
sometimes very valuable space.

- Email folders can become corrupted and sometimes lost forever.

To get a much more detailed view of exactly how POP3 email
works, there are actually two different servers running on
a server machine. One is called the SMTP Server, where SMTP
stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. The SMTP server
handles outgoing mail. The other is a POP3 Server, where POP
stands for Post Office Protocol. The POP3 server handles
incoming mail. The following link provides a look at exactly
how POP3 email works in detail:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/email.htm/printable

Web-based email is the type that people are most familiar with.
Whereas POP3 email requires an email reader, web mail only
requires a browser like Netscape, Internet Explorer, Opera,
NeoPlanet or Enigma.

Common brands of web-based email include: Yahoo!, Hotmail,
AltaVista, Lycos, USA, Netscape.net and thousands of others.

The Advantages of web-based email includes:

- You only need a browser to check your email from any computer
on the planet.

- Your email is 100% secure from folks browsing your computer,
unless the person acquires your password.

- Email is stored on someone else’s server.

- You do not have to wait for your email to download.

The Disadvantages of web-based email include:

- Most web-based email accounts have a size limit.

- Some accounts have a limit to the size of an individual email.

- Emails of more than 25kb are often changed into attachments.

- Getting an attachment out of one of these emails is sometimes
very difficult.

- Most of these accounts have spam filters that send requested
ezines into the spam folder.

- Nearly all of these accounts have lots of advertising while
you are reading your mail.

- You must be online to view your email.

For years, your only choice has been POP3 or web-based email. In
this last couple of years, a new type of email reader application
has come onto the scene. This type of application is an email
retrieval software which allows you to check your mail on both
POP3 and web-based email accounts. This software provides you
most of the functionality of POP3 email reader software, but it
permits you to check both types of email accounts at the same
time.

There are several different programs available in this genre.
Among those that are available, the best I have found is an
application called ePrompter at: http://eprompter.com/

ePrompter will permit you to check up to 8 different email
accounts at a time, both POP3 accounts and most web-based email
accounts. As with most email readers and browsers, ePrompter is
a Free application.

Just like a Dummy book, this article serves only as an
introduction to the different types of email available on
the net. The “How Stuff Works” site does a very good job at
describing how POP3 email works. To get a complete grasp of
how email works, please take a look at the “How Email Works”
tutorial at: http://www.howstuffworks.com/email.htm/printable

Copyright Bill Platt – All Rights Reserved

Bill Platt is the owner of http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com

• When you are tired of the struggle of the link building process, it might be time to consider our “Links And Traffic” services.
• When you are ready to employ more Natural Linking Strategies in increasing your link popularity, “Links And Traffic” can help.
• When you are ready for your links to actually generate click-through traffic, we are here.

This is not a link rental system or a reciprocal linking scam. We Guarantee our results.

Author: Bill Platt
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Wordpress plugin Guest Blogger

ASP – Application Service Provider. ASPs provide internet based software.

Access – Database software. Part of the Microsoft Office Suite. Organizations often store customer data in Access databases.

Autoresponder – a set of immediate or time-delayed messages that are emailed to someone after they request it

Blacklists – Lists of domains and IP addresses that have been reported or accused of sending spam. You can check blacklists at www.openrbl.org and www.dnsstuff.com.

Bonded Sender A type of delivery insurance, stamp of approval company for Email marketing companies. If you purchase the IronPort Bonded Sender Certificate, they will guarantee that your mail gets delivered to the large ISPs that they have relationships with.

Bounce back handling – The process of dealing with email messages that bo unce. Caused by a ‘bad’ email address or an address that is temporarily over its size quota or on a server that is temporarily down.

Bounces Emails that have been sent back to sender as the recipient email address was invalid or presently not working.

Click-through tracking Tracking the number of clicks that occur on each link in an email message.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – The ability to keep track of every interaction with every prospect and customer and keeps tracks of trends and tabulates results of such notes on an aggregate scale. Essentially, an intelligent interface that allows keeping notes of every action, sale, phone call, email, fax, etc. Allows businesses to better know their customers and target messages to portions of their customers and prospects. CRM is an integrated system designed to identify, acquire, and retain customers. CRM helps organizations maximize the value of every customer interaction by managing and coordinating customer interactions across multiple channels and departments.

CSV Comma separated value. A specific format in which each new field is separated by a comma. Ex: John,Smith,john@smithman.com,male,37.

Custom fields Fields that one may use to personalize each message (see mail merge personalization). These custom fields allow our customers to import and store additional data such as address, city, state, zip code, country, birthday, spouses name, dogs name, product purchased, date of purchase, notes, or any other data.

Database A storing of records. Databases are made up of tables. Tables are made up of columns and rows. Data is stored in a field (aka cell). Popular types of web databases include SQL and MySQL.
De-duping The act of removing duplicates from a list.

Delivery speed How fast a mailing software can deliver mail.

Domain – what one types in to go to your web site.

Double opt-in (confirmed opt-in) – Single opt-in is when a visitor subscribes to a newsletter via a form on the web site. They have opted-in once. Double opt-in is when a visitor subscribes to a newsletter via a web site and then is sent a confirmation email. The visitor will only be added as a subscriber if they verify their email address and desire to receive the newsletter. Generally, the visitor must either a) click a link in the email or

( b) reply to the email. This is called double opt-in. Using double opt-in will give a listowner a cleaner list (no bo unces) and less spam complaints, although they will lose many of their subscribers who, for one reason or another, forget to or do not confirm their subscription.

Email client what a person uses to view their email. Popular email clients include Microsoft Outlook, AOL mail reader, and Eudora. There are also popular web-based email clients including Hotmail and Yahoo. Often, HTML messages will display differently in different email clients.
Email list management software Software that allows users to collect, import, and manage subscribers.
Email marketing software Allows users to send out newsletters to their lists and track results. Standard features include mail-merge personalization, message scheduling, and bo unceback handling.

Excel A spreadsheet program which is part of the Microsoft Office Suite. Used by many organizations to store the data for their lists before import. Can be used to convert data into CSV format.

Ezine An electronic magazine. Essentially the same as an email newsletter. Usually sent on a regular schedule. Contains content. Not an anno uncement or promotion list.

Feedback loops Set up with Internet Service Providers. Once a feedback loop is set up, the ISPs will contact you and ask you to deal with the complaint. If a feedback loop is not set up, the ISPs may blacklist you without giving a chance to defend yourself. AOL, Juno, and Netzero provide feedback loops.

Harvesting Emails Using a spider to extract emails from pages on the internet, either through a search starting from a single page or a search based on a specific term put into a search engine
HTML Hypertext markup language, the basic programming language of the Internet.

HTML Built-in Editor Allows users to create their own HTML newsletters right on the sending page, without knowing HTML.

HTML templates An arrangement of graphics within which a email newsletter content can be inserted.
Importing Bringing subscribers into the system in mass quantities. Once a data file is in the proper CSV format, it can be imported into the system.

IP address The Internet Protocol Address. Ex. 209.51.151.158. Before the dynamic name server (DNS) system was setup in 1994, one would have to type in numbers (the IP addresses) to go to a web site. The DNS system allows one instead to simply type in the domain name. The DNS translates the domain name into the IP address and then directs the visitor to the server (or part of the server) that the requested domain name is hosted on.

ISP Internet Service Provider. The provider of dial-up or broadband internet service that a consumer or business uses. Common ISPs are AOL, Juno, Netzero, Earthlink, and Time Warner.

Mail merge personalization The ability to, on the fly for each email, insert data from the database into specific fields in an email. For example, one may place Dear [fname] in an email. When each email is sent out, a call to the database is made to retrieve the actual first name of that subscriber. It then pastes this data into the email. Dear John or Dear Judy will result. This is a powerful tool as it allows our customers to send out personalized emails to their subscribers. One could send out a message such as:

Dear [fname] [lname];

I wanted to personally thank you for purchasing [product] or [date]. I hope your [disease] is doing better. Please let me know how you have been and if I can answer any questions.
Maximum lists Many of our competitors will only allow the creation of one list. Some get around this by offering different interest groups or targeting within this list.

Message headers The hidden lines of text/code that is above each email message. Every email sent has a header.

Message preview The ability to see what a message looks like before it is sent.

Message scheduling The ability to set a time in the future for a message to start to be delivered to recipients.

Metrics Term used to refer to message statistics such as open and click through tracking, number of bo unces, number of unsubscribes, etc.

Multi-part MIME – All messages have a header on them called Content-Type. A message can be sent as text, text/html, or multipart/alternative. If it is sent as multipart/alternative, the message is sent using formatting referred to as Multi-part MIME. The advantage of sending via multi-part MIME is that the email will automatically display as HTML if the subscribers email client can read HTML, but revert to text if the subscribers email client cannot read HTML, or has it turned off. Within a multi-part MIME email, both the HTML message and text message are sent. Between the HTML message and the text message there is a boundary. This boundary is defined in the Content-type header.

Multiple message autoresponder – A series of messages that is sent out at certain time intervals which are set by our customer. One could use a multiple message autoresponder to send out a ten day ecourse for example. One email (”tip”) would be sent each day for 10 days. This can be a very good way to increase a visitor to sale conversion rate, build a relationship with a prospect, and improve the likelihood of a prospect or customer remembering your brand.

Open Tracking The ability to keep track of the number of opens (”reads”) a message gets.

OpenRBL.org – Web site through which one can view what blacklists a site is on.

Opt-in A term that refers to any subscriber that has specifically requested an email newsletter. If they have signed up through your web site, they are opt-in. If you used a spider to harvest emails from the Internet and then added these persons as subscribers to your site, they are not opt-in. This latter tactic is often used by those who send out spam.

Permission-based (see opt-in). Essentially, any list that contains only opt-in subscribers and does not contain any purchased lists or lists of persons who have asked to receive one type of newsletter and will be sent what they have not requested, such as additional promotions or newsletters on a different topic.

ROI Return on investment. The amount of money one makes from an investment divided by initial investment.

Sign up form A form that is to be put on a web site and allows visitors to subscriber to a companys newsletters and anno uncement lists.

Single opt-in A subscriber that joins via a web form who does now have to verify their email address or reply to a confirmation email to join. Most newsletter owners prefer single opt-in, as it maximizes the number of subscribers on a list, although bad email addresses are possible.

Spam unwanted email that was sent without the permission of the recipient. Also known as unsolicited commercial email. One of Broadwicks main challenges is ensuring our customers do not send spam. To accomplish this, we have a strict Anti-Spam policy. We also deal with any spam complaints promptly. We will terminate the account of any customer who has sent spam. Many times, however, a complaint will be made in which the message in question was not actually spam and the recipient had actually requested it. When we receive complaints, we will read the message, look to see if the subscriber actually opted-in via a web form or was imported in, and then taking all in account, make a decision on what action to pursue.

SpamCop.net A blacklist (but time based). A service that tracks spam and forwards spam complaints to ISPs and hosting companies. If one does not have the proper relationships or feedback loop with the ISPs, a few complaints to an ISP or hosting company can get your internet access and hosting turned off. If you are blacklisted by Spamcop and stop sending email, youll be out in 48 hours or so.

UCE Unsolicited Commercial Email. Another name for spam.

URL Uniform resource locator. Another name for a web site address.

Unsubscribe link The link at the bottom of each email which allows visitors to unsubscribe or modify/update their information.

Web-based Can log into online

Welcome email – Email that is sent to subscribers after they subscribe to a newsletter. Doesnt go out unless the client (our customer) sets this option.

Whitelisting Opposite of blacklisting. Many ISPs have lists of sites with which they have built good relationships with and trust. If your sending fits their standards, it may be possible to add yourself to a whitelist. If you are on a whitelist, your mail has a much better chance of being delivered.

Ryan Allis is a well known author who writes articles and CEO of Broadwick Corporation, providers of Email marketing software IntelliContact Pro. For additional information on Email marketing for more tips, ideas and solutions about email marketing please visit http://www.email-marketing-software-resource.com/

Author: Ryan P. Allis
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Free unlimited image hosting

How well is your email signature working for you? For most people who use email, an email signature is just a basic contact information signature file that they append to their emails without giving it much thought, if they choose to use an email signature at all. However, for online business owners, an email signature can be the least expensive yet most effective tool in your online business marketing toolkit. Why? Because it enables you to promote yourself and your business without any blatant advertising. It’s like sending a business card with a call to action in every single email that you send.

Where should you be using your email signature? Here’s a quick list:

–on every single piece of email that you send to friends, family members, colleagues, etc. from your computer’s email program (Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.)

–in every email that you send in response to a posting on email discussion lists

–in every posting that you make on an online discussion forum

–anytime you send a broadcast email out to your list through your email broadcast service

You never know where you email will end up (how many emails do you forward in one day?) nor who will be reading it, so it pays to attach an effective email signature to everything that you do. It serves as a wonderfully effective free marketing tool that works for you 24/7. I’ve gotten countless subscribers to my newsletter from simply using a compelling call to action in my email signature.

What are the components of an effective email signature? I’ve seen horribly long email signatures (as many as 20 lines), signatures missing basic contact information, and email signatures that leave me thinking, “So what?”. Here’s how you can create an effective email signature that will help you get clients online:

1. Keep it short. Nothing is worse than reading an email signature that’s longer than the email itself. To be most effective, limit yourself to no more than 7 lines. As you participate in discussion lists or online forums, the list moderators may limit your signature to as few as 5 lines. So, just like you make your printed business card “Rolodex proof” (i.e. don’t put essential contact info at the bottom of the card where it will be lost when holes are punched into it for your Rolodex), keep your most essential info in the first 5 lines of your signature file. That way, if some info is cut off when you post to a discussion forum, it won’t be the essential info that you want to convey. Better yet, do as I do and create various email signature files for different uses, including ones specifically created to comply with the rules of various discussion lists to which I belong.

2. Include only essential contact info. This would include your name and title or tag line, as appropriate, phone number, website, and email address. The phone number and email address may be optional, depending on the purpose of your email and how it might be displayed (for example, sometimes an email discussion list will post your email address automatically in the body of your post, so you can use that space in your signature for something else).

Don’t list every single way that someone can contact you — only the most important, essential methods that you prefer. I’ve seen some email signatures contain 5 phone numbers. The lines listing those phone numbers can be much more effectively used for another purpose. And, make sure your email address is the email address at your website. Sometimes you might not get the option of posting your website URL, so if you can only post an email signature, savvy readers can ascertain your website URL from your signature. Don’t use your email signature real estate to give any more free publicity to Yahoo, Google, AOL, Earthlink, or any number of other ISPs.

3. Make an offer for a free introductory product. What’s your free giveaway on your site — an ecourse, email newsletter, special report, ebook, audio or video clips? Give people a reason to visit your site by offering your freebie in your email signature. If your freebie contains info that they want, publicizing it in your email signature is a definite way to get them to visit your website.

4. Auto sendout. Every email program has the capability to automatically append an email signature to every piece of email that you send. Make sure that feature is turned on in your email program so that you don’t miss any valuable marketing opportunities. It’s tough to contact you if your email is missing its signature file.

5. Plain text or HTML? I’m still a big fan of sending out plain text emails for day-to-day correspondence. For the most part, I don’t use fancy fonts or special colors or formatting in my signature file. I want my email signature to be clearly displayed in any email program, and plain text is the best way to accomplish that. There are services like Plaxo (for users of Microsoft Outlook) that will let you create a business card image that is appended to your email as your email signature and import that into Outlook. However, I don’t use Outlook and I find these cumbersome, as there isn’t a way to cut and paste the sender’s contact info into my contact database. Additionally, many online discussion lists and forums don’t accept images or HTML in their posts. So, even though the business card images look pretty, I would encourage you to stick with a plain text email signature.

6. Make it clickable. Because you never know what email program your recipient is using, type in a few extra characters in the email address and website URL lines of your email signature file to guarantee that the link will be clickable. For a website URL, type in the entire URL, starting with http:// rather than simply www. to make sure that your link is universally clickable. For your email address, adding mailto: at the beginning of your email address, i.e. mailto:yourname@youremailaddress.com will enable the reader to click on that link and will open a blank email addressed to you in any email program.

7. Use a border. Having a simple border to separate your name as you end an email from your email signature will lessen the confusion as to what is considered the main text of the email versus the email signature. ASCII characters like == or ~~~ will create a simple border that is effective but not distracting.

An effective email signature has incredible power to drive traffic to your website. Take a few moments and evaluate your signature and see if it’s doing its best work for you. Your email signature is an incredibly effective marketing tool that can provide great “bang” for almost no bucks.

Copyright (c) 2006 Donna Gunter

Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Business Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To sign up for more FREE tips like these and claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit Get More Clients Online. Read about running an online biz at our Get More Clients Online Blog,

Author: Donna Gunter
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Canada duty rate

Learning how to get the most organization from your email software is very likely the most important skill you can learn to conduct a successful online home business.

There are three primary email applications on the market that folks use to manage their incoming POP3 email. Those three are:

• Microsoft Outlook Express
• Eudora
• Netscape Mail

In order to get the most from your email software, there are three key processes that you should learn. These processes are concerned with data organization, saving time and email database management.

SET UP EMAIL FOLDERS

Organization is key to any emails that you intend to save. Having 2000 emails in one folder is a sure-fire road map to confusion and lost communications and information.

You are the best judge as to how to organize your email into topics that provide an easy method of retrieval of the information when you need it most.

Fortunately, the primary email browsers make it easy to organize your information. By allowing you to create folders within your email software, you can file specific emails into folders dedicated to the topic of the email.

To create new folders:

OUTLOOK EXPRESS: 1. Click File – Folders – New — alternatively, you may also right click an item in the Folder window — and then type in the name of your new folder. Highlight the folder above where you would like your new folder to be placed, and then click OK.

EUDORA: Click on Mailbox – New — or right click on Eudora in the folders window and then click on New. When the window opens, type in the name of your new mailbox and click OK. If you want to create a folder to place other mailboxes into, click the checkbox before clicking OK.

NETSCAPE MAIL: Click File – New Folder. Then from the drop-down menu, select the folder that you wish to be the folder directly above your new folder, before clicking OK.

FILTERING EMAIL

Email filters are a tool to help you save time and frustration. Have you ever lost an incoming email under the deluge of email coming into your mailbox? With filters, you can direct the important email or not-so-important email into certain pre-ordained folders.

As part of the war against spam, most ISP’s use filters every day in an attempt to keep the spam out of your mailbox. In fact, I even use filters to sort my incoming mail trying to catch the spam my ISP missed.

Dont be fooled into thinking you need some special software to filter your email. Setting up filters is actually quite easy.

To setup email filters:

OUTLOOK EXPRESS: Click on Tools – Message Rules – Mail. A wizard will open to help you create your new email filters. Just follow the instructions provided to direct mail based on certain criteria into certain folders.

EUDORA: Click on Special – Make Filter. Once again, just follow the instructions in the Filter wizard.

NETSCAPE MAIL: Click on Edit – Mail Filters. Then click on New in the wizard. Once you click on New, you will be taken to a new wizard window. Follow the instructions here, then when you are done, click on OK. This will return you to the first window where you will set up the sorting order of your filter.

CLEANING AND COMPRESSING YOUR MAIL DATA

This is an important part of your email management. When you no longer need an email, it should be deleted. When you first delete an email, your software will send the email to the Trash Bin. Your email is not actually deleted until you first empty your trash bin.

Emptying your trash bin compresses the mailboxes from where the email was originally filed. This is absolutely paramount to the protection of your email data. If you go too long between compressing your email data, then your email data could become corrupted and you might need assistance in recovering your email data.

Even after you have emptied your trash, Compressing Folders is a recommended step to prevent other data corruption. Once you understand that an email does not actually move from one folder to another until the folder is compressed, then you can better appreciate this advice.

As an example, when Email A comes into your main Inbox, the data connected to Email A appears in two files. One file contains the header and body of the email. The other file contains only the email header information.

When an email is moved from one folder to the other, only the header information is actually moved. The body information will not be deleted from the original folder until which time the original folder is compressed.

This explains the purpose of emptying the trash AND compressing folders. If the email was simply moved from the Inbox to another folder, then emptying the trash is not enough. The original placement of the email is not actually removed from the file that contains the body information until the message has been designated for compression.

To empty your trash:

OUTLOOK EXPRESS: Click on Edit – Empty ‘Deleted Items’ Folder. To compress the remaining folders, click on Tools – Options, then click on the tab for Maintenance. Then click the button that says, “Clean Up Now”. Once the compression is completed, click OK.

EUDORA: Click Special – Empty Trash. To compress the remaining items that need compression, then click on Special – Compact Mailboxes.

NETSCAPE MAIL: Click on File – Empty Trash Folder. To compress the mailboxes, click on File – Compress Folders.

I cannot stress enough how important it is that you utilize the tools for emptying the trash and compressing the mail folders. Protecting your email data on a regular basis is good practice for avoiding disaster in your mailbox.

So many of us rely upon our email software to keep our online business running smoothly. Once you master the tools provided in your email software, your online business will run smoothly also.

Let me share one important lesson I l’ve learned about computer software. One should never be afraid to try new things. Learning how to get the most out of your software relies upon your willingness to dig in and learn how to use it.

Once you learn how to use your software to its full potential, then your life will be greatly simplified and your effectiveness will be dramatically improved.

About The Author

Stone Evans owns the Home Business Resource Directory where you can find everything you’ll ever need to start, run and grow a home based business at: http://www.Home-Business.com

articles@home-business.com

Author: Stone Evans
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Canada duty tariff

All You Need is Branded Email

Always Branded Email There to Remind Me

For the past 75 years, almost every form of popular communication has transformed from black and white to color. Newspapers, television, and computers are only a few examples. (Well, some computers went from green and white to color)

That leaves this question: Why hasnt everyday email communication done the same? Think about it this way your company probably spends quite a bit of money on building brand image. Billboards, newspaper ads, radio ads, jingles, TV commercials, logo creation, business cards, corporate letterhead, and websites are just a few of the places that corporate marketing dollars might be spent. Why leave out one of the most used (if not the most used) form of communication that you have?

Everybody Wants to Brand Their Email

Branded email can be classy enough for more conservative companies (legal, banks, medical, etc) and showy enough for businesses to highlight products or services that have to have that graphical edge. Most companies can develop a template (or set of templates) thats geared toward how you want to use them. The ability to choose from more than one template is also a nice feature to have, so you can vary the emails you send based on purpose.

Me and Branded Email Down By the Schoolyard

When youre considering a branded email system, do your homework. And if the company has a free trial, take it. You dont want to purchase something and end up hating it. Keep in mind, however, that most companies, however, wont develop a custom design for you to use during your free trail, so you wont get the full experience until after your purchase. But while youre researching, here are some things to look for:

• Spam Filters See what they say about spam filters. A good system can get past most spam filters (with the exception of extremely strict filters). If youre testing the system, can you send an email to yourself? (If you test lots of systems and none of them get past your filter, consider getting a better one, or making yours less strict)

• Email size If the system embeds or attaches the images to the email, stay far, far away from it. You dont want all of your emails going out at 300-1000k in size. That would be a long download even on a broadband connection. The typical plain text email is 5-10k; your emails shouldnt go over 100k, and even that is pushing it. Do note that Outlook, by default, will embed any image in an email when you click send. You have to turn this off through the Tools > Options > Mail Format > Internet Format > HTML Options checkbox (MS Outlook 2002 and 2003)
• Usability Make sure the product is easy to use. The last thing you want to do is waste precious time trying to use a bad product while sending your email. You should be able to set your account up, and send emails like normal.
• Functionality If your email contains links to specific pages or areas in your website, you can send traffic directly to your catalog, your affiliate/reseller site, your online video, anywhere you want them to go. This is a much better opportunity than Hey, go check out my site at www.EmailAppeal.com! As the old adage goes, on the Internet youre always 1 click away from losing a customer.
• Dynamic Capabilities Be sure you can easily change your contact information, picture (if the system allows you to upload one) and any other sensitive information on your template.
• Control Do you have control over the aspects of the design, or can the user change the design at will? Brand control and consistency is a big deal in any business.
• Security Does the system require you to send your email through a different server or to a different email address? This is a security risk whether they say so or not, as your emails are all being routed through a third party server. A good system will work without requiring you send your email through a third party.

I Want to Know What Branded Email Is

Branded email can fall into the following categories, each works a little differently than the next:

• Stationary Microsoft Outlook comes with its own stationary tool, and there are quite a few other stationary companies. Drawbacks These systems typically provide little or no customizability, no functionality; no usability; can be email size issues

• Mail Redirect This type of branded email system can use (or allow you to develop) a custom template, then in order for you to send branded email, you send an email to second- or third-party servers, via an email address like this one – your.recipient@company.com@MailRedirectCompany.com – which puts your message in the body of the branded email template, then send it to the recipient on your behalf. Drawbacks low usability; not secure; hard to reply/forward email with branding
• Web Based Now were getting to the more advanced systems. This type of system offers custom and/or generic templates that you can use with your email. You log in to their website and send your email through their site. Drawbacks Most wont allow you to use your own email address; not secure; hard to reply/forward email with branding
• IT Department or Design Department created If you have an IT guy/department or a design guy/department you can probably do this in-house. Create the HTML template that you want to use, and add it into your client. Drawbacks it takes time to change the templates if your contact information changes; you have to duplicate the design and change it for every person in your office; you have to host the images on your server, or attach/embed them to the email (size issue)
• Integrated This is the type of system you should be looking for. Integrated systems integrate with your mail client (Outlook, Eudora, etc) and allow you to send branded email just like you would any other email. Good systems allow you to do this with as few clicks as possible, and the best ones dont require you to start another program in order to add the branding aspects. Drawbacks if you use an off-brand client, it may not be supported

Its the End of the Article as We Know It and I Feel Fine

Branding is alive and well in the world today, and its next frontier is email. More and more businesses are switching to an email branding system, and plain text email is slowly losing its grip on business communication. Find a system that fits your business, and start branding today.

Copyright 2005 Jason DeVelvis www.EmailAppeal.com

About the Author:
Jason is a long time web developer and the owner of Email Appeal, an email marketing company located in Holland, OH. You can contact him by calling 866-665-3887 or by visiting http://www.EmailAppeal.com

Author: Jason DeVelvis
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Mobile device news

Email marketing is one of the most powerful, effective ways to market your company and its products, but it’s often overlooked.

Email – What is Email?

Well, unless you’ve been hiding for a generation, email or electronic mail, has become the #1 form of communication in modern society. According to recent estimates, the number is approaching around 60 Billion email messages per day!

Email is popular. Friends and family use it to stay in touch across long distances. Co-workers use it when it’s more convenient than getting up and walking over or picking up the phone. Email is used to verify who you are (on various websites)… email is everywhere.

Knowing that email use is so prevalent it brings us to our next section – why email marketing?

Why Email Marketing?

In preparing for this article I was able to come up with 5 major reasons why a company or entity should do email marketing. These 6 reasons really ignore email marketing’s statistics – low cost, high effectiveness, etc. and really just concentrate on the benefits to your business after you’ve implemented:

• The Amazing Return On Investment
• Sales & Discounts
• News
• Surveys
• Saying in Front! (of your competition, of your clients, of vendors)

Return on Investment - According to Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generated an ROI of $51.58 for every dollar spent on it in 2006. The expected figure for 2007 is $48.56, and the prediction for 2008 is $45.65. Email marketing to in house lists outperforms all the other direct marketing like print pieces, brochures, sales pamphlets, etc. Email marketing is incredibly inexpensive to produce and replicate, but incredibly effective.

Send Information – there’s always stuff going on at your business. You have updates, you have changes, you have information that your customers would appreciate having, and would appreciate knowing. Email marketing allows you to get out this information in an extremely efficient manner. Compose one email regarding a recent change at your business – target an appropriate group of clients (more to come regarding targeting) – and suddenly thousands of people you do business with every day know exactly what is going on. Sending information – the real heart of email – is probably one of the biggest (and simplest) reasons why you should be doing email marketing.

Sales & Discounts – Are you holding a special sale or offering long-time clients a special discount? Let your customers know and you could be bringing in many more times the business you are now. They say it’s most effective to sell to an existing client. Email marketing is a prime way to efficiently (but personally) communicate sales, deals or discounts to your audience of potential and existing customers.

News - Communicate your good news! In business people like to know they are working with growing, prosperous companies. It rubs off! I met Colin Quinn a few years ago and contribute that awkward meeting in the Newark airport to my success today.

Just kidding, but if you have been mentioned in the paper or have had a ribbon cutting, let people know. Broadcast your good news, attain celebrity – even local celebrity, and continue to prosper.

Surveys – Your customers, vendors, employees – everyone you work with – deserve a voice. A quick email newsletter along with a survey can help you gain insight into all aspects of your business and associates.

Staying in Front – I saved the best for last. In my experience in setting up and creating email marketing, the biggest thing I would like to communicate is Staying in Front!
People only have a limited memory. If you performed a service – a great service – someone will probably tell a friend or two – or refer a business associate. But, as time goes by, as they get farther away from the date of the service, they may forget about you.

The detailing job you performed on your client’s car was fantastic, but as time goes by – as situations in your client’s life arise that warrant a referral (a friend of your clients buys a used car for example) – the transaction is so far away that they forget that you are available with a service that will benefit them.

Email marketing destroys this time barrier. Clients you performed services on years ago when properly informed on your latest information, sales, news, surveys, etc. are getting an inbox full of you and can’t forget about you. Even if they don’t read every email the constant small reminders are a great tool to help your business stay in front. Email marketing allows you to stay in front of all of those clients and vendors you worked so hard to get, but may not be working with or helping at this exact moment.

Additionally, an email newsletter helps you stay in front of your competition. I’ve talked with many companies recently unsatisfied with their vendors or other services they’ve hired out, but they can’t even remember the company’s name! People are busy, they will forget. But, if your client does get targeted by a competitor an email newsletter – one that has helped keep your company in your client’s mind – is a great tool to retain your client.

Acquiring Email Addresses

There are a number of ways to acquire the email addresses of individuals to which you will send your email newsletter. Any amount of size will do. You can start small. We started with only about 60 or so addresses (friends, family, colleagues, clients, etc.). Your list will grow over time. But, the ONLY way in which you should acquire emails are via free methods:

Existing Associates - Tap your existing clients for emails. If you already have some kind of excel spreadsheet with all of your clients and vendors or if you are using more advanced CRM software start there. Compile your list from people you work with every day.

Networking Events – If you go to networking event ask everyone you meet if they would mine receiving your email newsletters. More often than not your list will grow incredibly fast once you start concentrating on it. Most of these suggestions involve events and people you attend and see every day.

Trade Show – Offer a free gift, guide, or consulting session to everyone who is willing to be added to your list. You’re at the trade show to network and market your products or services, acquiring a real qualified email address allows you to do that for a lifetime.

Targeting - Different emails will have different audiences. A message you have for your vendors might not apply to your customers – in fact it might be imperative that you don’t send that message as it will send mixed signals or tarnish relationships. That is why as you begin to acquire your list make sure to break it up. This process will vary depending on who you work with, generally you will have clients/customers, vendors, leads, friends & family, etc. As your list grows and you continue to hone in on your email marketing skills the more targeted your list is the better.

DO NOT USE PAID LISTS – Paid lists or compiling randomly found email addresses from websites throughout the net – although allowed – will lead to nothing but trouble in all but the most lucky or extreme of cases. Simply put, do not solicit to anyone that you haven’t physically met or asked to a part of the newsletter – email marketing, when done right will take more time, but in the long run it will be more effective, have a higher return, and will keep you out of trouble.

Marketing to people who have not asked or given you permission can get your account banned from different services (if you are using a paid email newsletter service) destroying any hard work you put into the design or creation of your targeted lists.

Marketing to people who have not given you permission can also lead to the server where you send out the messages becoming black listed – hurting anyone else on that same server and leading to overall mail problems for your business and the other businesses on the server.

Creating Your Email Newsletter

You’re ready to go, you’ve decided you want to do an email newsletter. You’ve spent sometime gathering some addresses what do you do next?

Service: – Create your email. There are a number of ways to do this. If you are on a very small budget or just starting out you can simply use your own email, outlook, hotmail, or yahoo will all work fine. Paste your contact emails, draft a short message and hit send.

Outlook users can also do what’s called a mail merge – and if you’ve setup your email list through an excel document you can merge appropriate fields for a more personalized message.

If you’re looking for something more advanced, maybe something that is designed to look like a newsletter with your logo, you can play around with the tools the above services offer or move to a complete email newsletter service.

Personally, I am a proponent of Constant Contact. We’ve been working with the service for years. It is very easy to use and customize and you pay per contacts – not per number of emails sent. That might not work for all companies, but if you have a 5000+ list of contacts and you send a message out twice a week, the number of emails sent quickly adds up.

If you are looking to create a more advanced look, with accurate tracking I highly recommend investing in one of these services.

Etiquette – Your email should be polite, but laid back. Speak to your audience in the 2nd person, it takes a while, but the affect is tremendous. In the end you know you’re audience best – write your email for them. What works for a crazy online tee shirt company might not work for a financial advisor.

Subject Line – Make sure your subject line pertains to the body of your email but, be creative and inventive. Experiment with different ways to say what it is you’ve created. You need people to see your name, see your subject line, and want to click.

Design – Whether you use one of the above email newseltter services or just your plain email keep design in mind. You might not need a logo, fancy colors, or cool effects, but direct your audiences eye with bold text, bullet points, colors, etc. And make it as simple as possible. Email inboxes are getting more and more cluttered and people have little or no time to actually read. Quickly direct them to the most important points.

Content – Much like design, make your content short. Typically a paragraph works, but a few sentences is better. Time and time again in doing usability and optimization tests with clients emails that are short and simple perform the best. Additionally your email needs to include a call to action. Whether its drop dead simple – a big button asking your audience to donate – or included in the body of the text give your readers a next step. Do you want them to click, to call, etc. and whatever that goal is, make sure they can reach it quickly and simply.

Sending Email

When sending your emails there are two primary things to remember, send at the right time, and send to the right audience.

We discussed divvying your list up into different groups or lists. As you acquire the emails, break them out as best you can. That way, when sending emails you can send specific, targeted messages, to those particular groups. We’ve even gone so far as to create groups for certain events we’ve attended. That way we can send a message just to those people we’ve met – or perhaps a special promotion.

Timing is everything and email newsletters are no different. A message sent at 5:30 pm on a Friday will not usually be as effective as a one sent on a Wednesday at 2pm. Much like the crafting of your content, keep your audience’s habits in mind. Do they check their email at 5am in the morning? Do they have busy work days involving lots of email? Overall we’ve found that email send in the middle of the week has last chance of getting bundled in with the end of the work week mess or the overflow that seems to pour in on Mondays. Time of day is also important. All audiences are different but if you are seeking professionals we’ve found mid afternoon is great. Most people have already sifted through their inbox mess and when your email pops up in the lower right hand corner of their screen it is a wonderful distraction.

Tracking Your Emails

Depending on what service you use to send your email tracking may be difficult or simple. This is another reason why we love the email newsletter services as they allow for easy, almost creepy, tracking. You can view email-over-email who clicked on what and when. As you continue to send out emails you may start to notice that a certain time works better or certain words in your subject line leads to better open rates.

As you do track your emails begin to experiment and refine. Overtime with slow tweaks you can have a highly opened email that almost everyone reads.

Legalities

Inspired by my recent trip to the Entrepreneurs Law School at FGCU I decided to throw in a little bit about the legalities surrounding email. Basically you can send email to anyone, at any address, no matter where or how you got that address as long as these basic requirements are met:

• Use a non-elusive subjectline
• Allow people to unsubscribe
• Feature your company information (name, address, phone, etc.)

Whew… that was a lot. But, once you get started I am positive you’ll be excited at the results. If you have any questions regarding email newsletters or would like to learn more please feel free to contact me!

Zachary Katkin is the founder of Naples Web Design Firm, Atilus Web Development & Internet Marketing. Zach can be contacted via the company’s web site at http://www.atilus.com

Author: Zach Katkin
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Cellphone news

Checking email too often is a significant productivity drain. Email by its very nature isnt usually urgent unless its your entire job, such as answering customer support emails. Here are some tips to prevent email from taking too big a chunk out of your day.

1. Decide in advance exactly when youll check email.

Dont check email haphazardly. You can easily waste 30-60 minutes per day checking email too often. In most cases you should be fine checking your email 3x per day maximum. I typically check mine in the morning, at lunch, and at the end of the workday. And thats only if Im involved in active open-loop communications. If I dont have any active open loops, then Ill usually check email once or twice a day. Handle your email in batches to increase your efficiency.

Experiment with how often you really need to check email. Realize that youre paying a productivity price the more often you check it. Curiosity is not a good enough reason to check email. Have a legitimate business reason for checking email as often as you do. See how infrequently you can push it without causing problems. For many people once a day or even once every two days will work just fine.

Once you check email in the morning, promise yourself that you wont check it again until the end of the day, and set a specific time. Ill check my email twice today, so I wont check it again until after 6:00pm. If its before that time, I wont allow myself to check it.

If you get addicted to checking your email too often, you can help break the habit by making it harder to run your email program. Remove the program icon from your desktop and your quick launch bar, so you have to hunt for it on the Start Menu. Or make yourself launch Explorer and navigate to find the icon from there. Adding extra steps can help break the pattern of impulse checking. And if that still doesnt work, setup your email on a separate PC like a laptop that you must boot up every time you want to check email.

2. Use email only for non-urgent communication.

Dont turn email into an urgency-driven communication tool. Its not designed for that. If time is of the essence, then pick up the phone. Now that you can get unlimited long distance for $25/month from companies like Vonage (also check out Skype), theres no reason to be stingy with the phone.

If you have others pressuring you to check your email more often than once or twice a day, such as people that get frustrated if they dont get a reply from you within an hour or two, then you need to push back. Let such people know that they should never use email for truly urgent communication with you if they need a fast reply, they must pick up the phone or visit you in person (if youre both co-located).

3. Disable email checking on program startup.

Dont set your email program to auto-check email every time you launch the program. You want to be able to send an email at any time during the day without automatically checking email too. You may often need to send emails during the day as part of various tasks, but you dont need to check email at those times. Check email only when theres a legitimate reason for checking.

4. Log your email usage.

Create an email log, and record how often you check email. You can do this with a sheet of paper. Just record the start and stop times whenever you run your email program. Do it for about a week, and see how much time youre spending on email. Is it worth it? If youre checking your email more than 20 times a week without a legitimate reason, youre wasting way too much time. Try giving yourself a daily or weekly email checking quota, and once you hit it, you cant check your email anymore until the next day/week when your quota resets. Offer yourself a reward like going to see a movie or going out to dinner the first week you come in under quota.

Email is a powerful business and personal communication tool, but its easily abused. Why? Because its so easy. Checking and answering email is something you know you can do, so it provides an immediate sense of accomplishment. But its a hollow victory, and if you spend your days masterfully checking and answering email, youll go nowhere and crowd out those actions that could really move you ahead.

Replace frivolous email abuse with purposeful intention. Use it to enhance your productivity instead of to destroy it. Consciously scrutinize the way you use email, decide what legitimate role it will play in your life, and set boundaries to enforce that role.

Copyright Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlina
Personal Development for Smart People
http://www.stevepavlina.com
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog (blog)
http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles (articles)

Steve is intensely growth-oriented. He trained in martial arts, ran the L.A. Marathon, and graduated from college in three semesters with two degrees. He can juggle, count cards at blackjack, and make damn good guacamole. Steve is also a polyphasic sleeper, sleeping just 2-3 hours per day and only 20 minutes at a time. So chances are good that he’s awake right now.

Author: Steve Pavlina
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera Information

The key concerns facing email marketing practitioners

Email is used heavily in both B2B and B2C markets. The medium has
obvious advantages- immediate, cost effective, real-time tracking and quick feedback loops for testing. The benefits are well documented, but this only tells half the story. UK email practitioners are facing difficult challenges when trying to manage an email program.

Adestra have conducted a survey of 65 UK based email practitioners to discover what the main challenges are that are facing them today. The results make interesting reading, with participants readily recognising that they could improve their email program.

In this article we provide a detailed summary of the main findings and Adestras suggestions of how you can address them.
We also look to the US. A more advanced email market than the UK, a recent Marketing Sherpa study has provided insight into the challenges
facing US marketers. Despite a more advanced email market, the
challenges described are similar to those facing UK experiences showing
that all email practitioners across the globe are facing similar
challenges

Survey reveals challenges facing UK email marketing practitioners

Published in June 2005 as part of the preparation for the Adestra email marketing clinc at the Online Marketing Show, Adestra have just conducted a survey of UK marketers to understand their challenges:

Methodology of the email marketing survey
The survey canvassed 65 UK based marketers to investigate what they
believe are the main challenges facing them within their email
marketing.
Both B2B and B2C companies participated including companies such as
Ford Motor Company, Coors Brewers, Prudential, Investec Asset
Management, RAC, Future Publishing Ltd, Cotton Traders and Reed
Business Information.
Findings of the email marketing survey

• 34% of B2B and 29% of B2C
  marketers in the sample agree that the growing, cleaning and management
  of their email contact database is the aspect of their email marketing
  program that they could improve most

• When considering what hot topics marketers wanted to learn
  more about to improve their email marketing, both B2B and B2C marketers
  voted for the same aspects:

• Deliverability: ensuring messages get to inboxes
• Message design: optimised design and lay-out of messages
• The future for email: new emerging technologies within email marketing e.g. rich media

• B2B marketers want to learn more about best practice lead generation email programs whereas B2C marketers prefer to discover more about eZine newsletters.

• 4 out of 5 respondents in the sample plan to use email marketing more in 2006.

Conclusions of the email marketing survey
Interestingly, both B2B and B2C marketers are facing similar
challenges despite using email marketing in different ways. They want
to learn more about issues such as deliverability and spam and most
recognise that there are faults within their existing programs,
especially in the way they manage their email contact database
With 80% of the UK marketers in the sample planning to use email
marketing more in 2006, and the willingness of the sample to accept
that there are numerous ways in which they could improve their email
marketing program, marketers should consider working with email
marketing specialists such as Adestra to use their expertise when
developing their email programs

Adestra recommendations for addressing challenges

• Email Database Hygiene:

Adestra recommend reviewing your entire data management strategy:

• Acquisition: make data capture vehicles work- see our 5 ways to get better data quality at point of collection for your email marketing program article for suggestions how

• Segmentation: Ensure you have enough information
  about each records to select only relevant names for your
  communications. Badly targeted messages mean more unsubscribes. Within
  Adestras Message Focus, you are able to segment by demographic and
  behaviour.

• Update my details: Adestra recommend that every email you send links back to a form for recipients to “updating my details”.
  Even with no incentive, our experience across a number of clients
  reveals that for every campaign, a small number of people always update
  their details. When multiplied over all your communications, this
  becomes a cost effective method of cleaning your database- much cheaper
  than using the telephone! Adestra have worked with individual clients
  to set these up, often pre-filling the form to increase response.

• Feedback: Every campaign broadcast through
  Adestras Message Focus automatically suppresses unsubscribe requests
  and hard bounces (for more information on bounces, please see our “How clean is your email marketing contact database?” article). This allows you to understand how many active records you have in real-time.

• Monitor: Use reporting to constantly understand
  how many records on your database have all the fields you require- some
  may be missing job titles etc. Consider running extra campaigns to
  encourage people to provide you with the extra fields you are missing

• Learning more about deliverability, spam and the future for email

To keep up to date with the latest hot topics within email marketing,
Adestra recommend you subscribe to many email marketing newsletters
including:

• Adestra Updates (our very own newsletter)
• Osborne Clarks Marketing law – www.marketinglaw.co.uk

• e-Consultancy – www.e-consultancy.com
• Email Sherpa – www.emailsherpa.com

Alternatively, you could save time by working with an email
marketing agency such as Adestra. These companies specialise within
email marketing ensuring they stay up to date with email developments,
so you dont have to- you can just pick their brains!

• Learning from eZine Newsletters and Lead Generation campaigns

To get informative case studies, you need to regularly attend
meetings of associations such as the DMA and the IDM, attend all
leading industry shows and subscribe to a host of email newsletters.

Amongst this wealth of information, there may be a case study that is
relevant to your role and organisation. Adestra recommend you work with
an email marketing agency who can draw from their experience of working
with many different email players to provide best practice and ideas
from improvement continuusly. Often, the best ideas come from places
youd never expect and using an agency such as Adestra allows you to
find them!

• Use of email will increase in 2006

Adestra recognise that the email channel will become more important
throughout 2006 for many companies, both B2B and B2C. Addressing the
challenges today will allow your email marketing program to continue
successfully within the future.
For more information about the survey, please contact Paul Crabtree

The view from across the pond

A recent Marketing Sherpa
study revealed that most US marketers perceive that they are faced with
significant challenges when managing their email program. Surprisingly,
these challenges are not entirely in the planning and management of
devising and managing an email marketing program.
Instead, it is problems born out of office politics a result of the
importance to the organisation of the email channel. Major battles
include:

• Frequency caps on sending: How often is too often?

• Management education: The challenges ensuring
  senior management do not perceive email programs as a cheap
  alternative. Allocating appropriate resource rather than re-using
  people and content is essential to ensure optimisation. Adding to this
  the need for a mindset shift from a its cheap so lets just keep doing
  it to a direct marketing paradigm where testing, measurement and
  improvement techniques are used is a considerable challenge.

• Multiple database managers: Ensuring both
  compliance and the collation of email names from across the business to
  support a coherent and legal email program

Adestra believe that all these challenges can be addressed by
implementing a measurable email marketing program which is continuously
tested to improve it. Questions such as how often is too often? can
be answered by analysing the contact history of your unsubscribe
suppression file.
Educating senior management can be a tough job, unless you have real empirical data to back up your assertions.
By demonstrating the ROI associated with your email marketing
program and getting senior management buy-in will help you overcome the
difficulties getting data from varying sources within the business.
When senior management are behind the program, the rest of the business
tends to fall in line.
On a more practical level, Adestras Message Focus includes a form
manager which allows you to create data capture forms to be used when
acquiring contact information. This information can be exported from
Adestras Message Focus at any point. Adestra recommend considering
using Adestra forms to manage your data capture- this ensures your
email database is deduped at the point of collection, you have the most
up to date email list you could possibly have and that you can provide
other parts of the business with access to their own Adestras Message
Focus account to download their own lists.

More information about our email marketing broadcast services

Adestra provide welcome tactical advice and input on our clients
email marketing program.

Adestras Message Focus

Adestra have a proven track record in providing email marketing
tools, technology, strategy and support for a number of large corporate
players.
From product delivery for large publishers through to tactical
direct response promotions for travel providers, all clients always
benefit from the shared best practice and knowledge our team have
gained working within email marketing since 2000.

Free email marketing white paper

Adestra have produced a white paper on the challenges that todays
UK email marketers are facing when trying to implement their email
marketing program
The research is based upon a survey of 65 marketers before the
show, discussions with over 170 contacts during the show and our
ongoing dialogues with our clients. It includes Adestras suggestions
on how you can overcome challenges including:

• Improving data management: email contacts and feedback loops
• Find relevant case studies to learn from
• Sifting all the data from your email campaigns to find actionable information
• Overcoming the office politics associated with email marketing

To receive a free copy of this white paper, please contact us and state Email Marketing Whitepaper within the Further Information section of the Adestra web site (www.adestra.co.uk).

Author: Paul Crabtree
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Hybrid and Electric Cars

Everybody knows what email is, right? In the modern business world, email has become one of our most important methods of communication, and indeed often a web hosting client considers the operation of his email more important than the website itself. Unfortunately however, most people have only a very superficial idea of how email really works, so when trouble does arise, they have no idea how to troubleshoot the problem and it takes longer to solve. Just by knowing the basics of how email works, you can give a more accurate problem description to tech support personnel and even solve some problems yourself! You might even find some new and useful features of your email that you didn’t know about before. Let’s get started.

What exactly is an email address?

The short answer is that an email address is a user account of a particular domain name that is hosted somewhere. That domain name can be your own or one that someone else allows you to have an account on, such as yahoo.com or gmail.com. Either way, the domain must be hosted, not simply registered. The web hosting server is what provides the software to send and receive mail and the disk space to store received messages in a mailbox file.

All web hosting accounts come with the ability to create user email accounts. To create the email address myname@mydomain.com, you would log into your hosting control panel for mydomain.com and create a new user called “myname” in the user account management area and create a password for that user. Once this is done, an internet-accessible mailbox is created on the server which you can begin using to send and receive email by whatever connection methods your host allows.

What happens when I check my email?

Before we start this answer, there are two types of email accounts that you can use, POP and IMAP. POP (Post Office Protocol) is by far the most common and is what we will discuss first. IMAP will be described separately below.

As we said above, every email address has a username and a password. Wherever you log in to check your email, whether it is a web-based interface like hotmail.com or an email client like Outlook Express, you have to provide your username and password to receive mail. The username tells the server which mailbox file to retrieve or display the mail from, and the password confirms your identity to prove to the server that you are authorized to receive the mail. The server has your password stored in a file from the time your account was created, and whenever you log in, it compares the password you provide with the password it has on file. If they match, then the server allows you to access the mail in your mailbox.

All passwords are case-sensitive, so if your original password is “PassWord” and you try to log in with “password“, it won’t work. Usernames are not case-sensitive, however, so the server will recognize you whether you log in as “MyName” or “myname“.

What is the difference between web-based email and using an email client?

The two primary ways to access an email account are from a web-based interface or by using an email client program, like Eudora, Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook. Here’s how they work:

1. Web-Based Mail: This type of access is done through your web browser. You would browse to a particular web page that has a login area connected to the web hosting server that houses your account. You put in your username and password and you are conveyed to a page that displays the contents of your mailbox on the server. From here you can read, reply to, forward or delete mail you have received, or generate and send new messages. All of this is done through a mail program running on the server such as Horde, Squirrelmail, or NeoMail, or a custom interface like those used by Yahoo!, GMail, etc. Some servers even offer you the option of logging in through different mail programs, depending on which one you like better. You can access web-based mail from anywhere in the world where you have internet access.

Whenever you use a web-based interface to manage your mail, you are accessing the contents of your mailbox on the server directly. If the server allows you 20 megabytes of disk space for your mailbox, then that is the maximum amount of mail you can have in your box at any one time. If you fill up all of that space, then you will not be able to receive any more mail until you delete some messages or get your host to give you more storage space, so your ability to archive messages is limited. If you delete a message, then it is gone forever. Web-based mail is fairly slow because your computer is continuously making connections with the mail server, and most web-based mail programs have fairly limited features.

2. Email Clients: You are probably familiar with email programs such as Microsoft Outlook or Eudora. They are what is known as an email client. Email clients can only be accessed from the computer on which the program is installed, but instead of only being able to access one server like the web-based mail programs, an email client can be set up to check multiple email accounts hosted on different servers at the same time. All you need to check an email address from an email account are the following settings:

• Username
• Password
• POP3 (Incoming Mail) Server
• SMTP (Outgoing Mail) Server

You already know about the username and password, and the two mail servers tell your email client where to find the web hosting server that your account resides on so that it can connect to the mail software on that computer and allow you to send and receive mail. Whenever you sign up for a web hosting account, the hosting provider will tell you what the names of these servers are, and they are usually related to your domain name. A typical POP3 server name would be mail.mydomain.com or pop3.mydomain.com.

The SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server is a separate part of the server’s mail software which handles outgoing email. Its name might look like mail.mydomain.com or smtp.mydomain.com. Most servers require you to check your incoming mail first, and thus verify your identity with your password, before they will allow you to send mail out. On average servers will store this verification for 30 minutes before requiring you to check your mail again. Some internet service providers (ISPs), such as Earthlink and SBC, may require you to use their corporate SMTP servers instead of the one set up with your domain, in order to help them control junk email being sent out through their network. You can find out what their SMTP server is by contacting the ISP’s technical support or looking it up on their website.

A key difference in how an email client works compared with a webbased interface is that the email client downloads the contents of the mailbox to your computer’s hard drive and removes them from your mailbox on the server. This way, you can store as much old email as your hard drive can hold and you rarely have to worry about your disk space on the server getting full as long as you check your mail frequently. If you go a long time without checking your email or you receive several large attachments, then your mailbox on the server can still get full, but as soon as you check your mail with the mail client, the mailbox is emptied just like a regular postal mailbox and the cycle starts over. An email client usually also comes with a larger range of features, such as address books, mail filtering and folder storage options, read receipt notices and other things that a web-based program can’t handle because it would bog the server down trying to handle all that for hundreds or thousands of accounts.

The downside of using an email client is that you can only check the mail from wherever you have the client set up with your account settings entered into it. If you want to check the mail from two different computers, then whichever computer checks the mail first will get it and the other one won’t, just like two people checking the corner mailbox. Most email clients have a setting that allows you to leave a copy of messages on the server so that multiple computers can get the same mail, but this has to be carefully coordinated among the different computers involved. A more convenient way to do this is using the IMAP protocol, as you’ll see below.

Can I use both web-based mail and an email client at the same time?

Yes, absolutely. Many people use an email client when they are in their office or at home and check their mail through the web-based interface provided by their web host when they are away from their computer. One does not interfere with the other.

What is IMAP?

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) was designed to solve the problem of checking mail from multiple computers in an email client. When you are checking mail on multiple computers with the POP method, then each computer has its own record of how the mail has been managed. If you delete an old message on one computer and the other computer also has a copy of the same message, you will have to delete it a second time on the other computer in order for both clients to match. IMAP solves this problem by maintaining the mailbox on the server without sacrificing the client software’s added functionality. Any client checking an IMAP-enabled email account will see the same mailbox contents no matter where it is, but will still be able to execute all of the functions programmed into the client on that mail as if it were using a POP account.

IMAP has the same disadvantages as web-based email in that you are limited to the amount of disk space allowed by your host and access speed is slow because you are accessing a remote server repeatedly. For this reason, IMAP is much less common than POP email.

What is an email alias?

Suppose your email address is bobsmith@mydomain.com, but you want people to be able to email you at bob@mydomain.com or sales@mydomain.com as well. You don’t have to set up three different user accounts if all of that mail is coming to you. Instead you can set up aliases, also called forwarders, to your account, which are other names that forward to the same mailbox. You still have to use the original username to log in and check your mail, but you can set up as many aliases to your account as you want. These would be set up in your web hosting control panel in the user account management section.

You can also set up aliases that go to multiple addresses. For instance, if your company has three salespeople each with their own email address, but you want all of them to receive a copy of messages sent to sales@mydomain.com, you don’t have to set up an IMAP account on each of their computers. You can simply set up an alias called “sales” that forwards to all three of their addresses, and each will instantly get a copy when an email is received. However, if you have two employees named Bob Smith and Bob Jones, you probably don’t want bob@mydomain.com to go to both bobsmith@mydomain.com and bobjones@mydomain.com. In that case it would be better to have unique aliases like “bobs” and “bobj“.

Can an alias forward mail to an address outside my domain?

Yes. Say you’ve had a Hotmail email account for years and you’ve just set up hosting for a new domain name. You want to be able to receive email to your new domain, but you really don’t want to check multiple accounts. You can set up an alias in your hosting control panel that automatically forwards all mail sent to myname@mydomain.com to myname@hotmail.com. No mail will pile up on your web server, it will simply pass through it like a waypoint before being redirected to your Hotmail account.

What is a default or catch-all account?

Whenever you set up a web hosting account, you automatically have one user account, the default user, even if you don’t set up any others. This user’s mailbox is usually set up as a catch-all, meaning that it will receive any email that ends with @mydomain.com that doesn’t go to a specific named account. It usually looks like mydomain@mydomain.com. If the only user account you set up is bobsmith@mydomain.com, then that account will receive only mail sent directly to it. If some spammer tries to send an email to rumplestilskin@mydomain.com, it will end up in the catch-all account.

Most control panels allow you to change which of your accounts is the catch-all, so you could ignore the default user and have all mail routed to bobsmith@mydomain.com if you wanted. If you really don’t care about email sent to batman@mydomain.com, however, you may also choose to blackhole the catch-all, meaning instantly delete whatever comes into it, or you can bounce it so that the sender gets a message saying that address at your domain does not exist. This is usually a wise choice, since most catch-all accounts these days are magnets for junk mail.

What is an autoresponder?

It’s time for you to take that much-needed vacation and you want to make sure that people know you won’t be answering your messages for a few days. You can set up an autoresponder in your control panel for a particular user account so that anyone who sends you an email, gets an instant programmed reply. You simply select the account you want to create the autoresponder for, type up the message you want everybody to get, then save it. When you’re ready to stop it and answer your own messages again, you can either turn the autoresponder off or delete it, depending on the type of control panel you have.

One problem with autoresponders, however, is that they automatically respond to everything. If someone else who has an autoresponder turned on sends you an email, the two servers will quickly wind up in an autoresponder war and both mailboxes will fill up with thousands of messages until they reach their disk space limit or one of the autoresponders is turned off.

Conclusion

Now that you know how email works, hopefully you’ve found something that makes your job a little easier or clears up a problem you were having. The next time your computer says your password is incorrect or that it can’t connect to the POP3 server, you at least have an idea what that means and why it might be happening, and you can convey that to the technical support person who is helping you or fiddle around with your settings and try to fix it yourself. Either way, next time you’ll be able to get back to business faster!

Copyright 2005-2008 by Stacy Clifford
Stacy Clifford is the founder of ChiliPepperWeb.net and has been assisting customers in understanding how their web services work since 2001.

Author: Stacy Clifford
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Electric Pressure Cooker