Posts Tagged ‘E-mail hosting’

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About email autoresponders.

April 5th, 2011

Email autoresponders can become a vital feature of your online marketing plan. In order to use them effectively, it’s important to understand the different options available, and methods of increasing their effectiveness.

There are important features to look for when choosing your autoresponder program or service. These include:

  • Allowed length: be sure to check whether the service limits how long sales letters can be.
  • Response time: how long do customers wait for an answer when they visit your site for information? They should be receiving an email from your service immediately.
  • Options: you should be able to choose between HTML and plain-text versions of emails, and subscribers should be able to “opt-out” or unsubscribe if they don’t want to receive further emails.
  • Daily Reports: since your autoresponder emails are part of your marketing program, you’ll want to know how successful it is (and which ones are working!) by being able to view stats on subscribers, unsubscribe requests and other information. This information will help you target your marketing efforts, and drop or change the emails that don’t generate a good response rate.
  • Flexibility: make sure that you can change or personalize your emails, free of charge. You will want the option of making changes to emails, since most marketers like to “tweak” their copy from time to time.

Making Autoresponders Part of Your Marketing plan

Autoresponder emails can be an integral part of any business CRM (Customer Relationship Management plan). Autoresponders let you contact your customers, but without paying for human manpower, and can literally add fuel to a good web site in gathering sales.”

autoresponders are an important part of online marketing, but adds that they don’t replace other methods. “They’re an addition, not really a replacement. Each sale does generally require a “human touch,” however there are some times that the autoresponders will close a deal by itself. They are our “automated follow-up” mechanism, and do that extremely well.”

1) Drive qualified hits to the site.
2) convince a prospective customer to sign up for a free trial account.
3) Send out auto-responder messages frequently.
4) Personal follows up by telephone / email as soon as reasonably possible.

Email autoresponders are an integral part of the follow-up process in this marketing plan.

You do need to make sure that you set up your autoresponder to prevent inadvertently Spamming people. IT HAPPENS! Sometimes autoresonders can hurt you too, so you need to be careful when using them. ”

So How useful Are Autoresponders?

While it’s impossible to generalize completely since email copy varies widely, as well as methods of sending them out (monthly, weekly, or series of ten versus a one-time mail), overall autoresponder emails stack up favorably against other methods of marketing. In fact, they can be less expensive and generate better results than some of the more traditional methods such as direct mail.

In general, direct mail averages about a .5 to 1 % response rate. Email responses are usually higher, around 1.5 to 3% with a decently strong email; some of the really good ones can get a response rate of up to 10%!

Autoresponders are an integral part of the sales process, and yes, they’ve increased sales. Being a small shop, it generally takes us 3+ days to respond to new signups. In the meantime, potential customers are being reminded of our services on a daily basis – each sales letter explains the benefits, new ways to use the service, and gives more bonus items when they purchase. Currently, we are closing about 10-20% of our qualified leads with the auto-responders and new sales method. Before, we were doing about 1 in 100.

In today’s online market, email autoresponders are being used more frequently for a simple reason: they work, and help to save valuable hours in customer follow-up. According to our web marketing experts, it definitely pays to understand how this effective marketing tool works, and to add it to the items that you use to generate inquiries and sales.

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Posted in E-mail marketing, Email hosting

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Email Hosting.

March 24th, 2011

Every business knows the importance of email as the fastest and cost effective way of communication. Since most small businesses cannot afford expensive means of communications like overseas phone calls, fax etc, communicating through emails is definitely a bonus.  Email marketing is obviously very popular, and you have no doubt been sent a large number of emails since opening your first email address online. Although there are many genuine email marketing campaigns that are sent out on a daily basis from online retailers such as Amazon, there are unfortunately a lot of bogus ones containing potential phishing attacks and harmful data.

1)   Protection from virus, spam and phishing: Nothing spoils the functionality of your mailbox as a virus or a spam does. In addition, phishing endangers your business mails by stealing your identity, thereby causing huge loss. Setup an anti-virus – Although this may sound like a very simplistic one that you are likely to see on any security checklist, an anti-virus is incredibly important, especially if you are using a desktop email client such as Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird (online email providers such as Gmail and Hotmail tend to have built-in virus protection software).

2)   Improved business position: Look out for a email hosting provider who holds vast expertise in picking and implementing the right messaging systems aligning with your business. Also, ensure the features like high availability and high scalability of email solutions offered. They must be customized to cater to your specific email needs.

3)   Best in class communications: Check that your email hosting provider has cutting-edge infrastructure to be able to lessen all your email hosting worries.

4)   Reliable, Customizable Offerings: Find out if your email hosting services include exclusive features like email back-up, data recovery, disaster recovery, 24×7 technical and customer support to ensure that you make the most out of your emails.

5)   Cost efficiency: The key reason for outsourcing the email hosting services to an external vendor is to reduce the unexpected expenditures and get the maximum output without increasing costs. A good email hosting provider will not only meet these needs, but also suggest you the ways to increase the efficiency of your messaging applications in every required way.

6)   Improved availability: Check out if your email hosting provider employs professionals to host and manage your messaging applications, ensuring high-availability of your applications as well as optimal performance.

7)   Be careful when clicking: Once you’ve received an email it can be tempting to click straight through to a website if you see an interesting deal or image – but that’s exactly what you have to be careful of doing. Hover over or copy the link to your clipboard if possible, allowing you the opportunity to examine the destination URL before you proceed.

8) Avoid entering details:   Some potentially harmful emails will encourage you to enter your personal details (credit card/address) directly into a form embedded into an email – and this should be avoided at all costs. Forms that are embedded into emails are done so for a reason, and that is because the destination in which the information is sent is often hidden.

9) If it’s true good to be true, it usually is: If you receive any emails containing promises of fantastic deals that you believe seem too good to be true, then be very wary. Use your favourite search engine to run a quick search to see if anybody else has mentioned the promotion anywhere, and the chances are you will be given an answer one way or another.

10) Be wary of forgotten password emails: Unless you know you have specifically requested your password to be reset on a website, you should delete any emails you receive that claim to be resetting your ‘forgotten password’. These types of emails are often looking for you to enter personal details in unsecure locations.

11)  Ignore unsolicited emails: If you receive an email out of the blue from somebody you have absolutely no connection with, be immediately wary. There is the chance your email address could have been picked up online by a potentially harmful sender, meaning you may receive unsolicited emails relating to various topics. Do not reply, and do not open any containing attachments.

12)  Avoid providing any private details: A final but yet hugely important tip is to avoid providing any personal details via email at all costs. Don’t send credit card or PayPal login details to anybody via email no matter what the circumstance, and if you have to provide somebody with a password or piece of secure information, provide this in person or over the phone where possible.

With the above tips in mind, you should be relatively free of would-be phishing attacks via email marketing campaigns online. One thing to remember is always is wary – always. There are unfortunately a lot of people who make their money online by scamming others, so it’s important to stay on your toes and report and doubtful activity.

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Posted in Email hosting, Reseller hosting

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The Benefits of Email Hosting

February 4th, 2011

Email hosting is designed for businesses that cannot or simply do not want to spend their precious time and resources on setting up and managing an internal messaging infrastructure.  This is very understandable because the continued maintenance and support can raise costs and also greatly increase the probability of virus infections, hardware and software problems.  All of these issues could leave your business without email functionality for hours and possibly days.

There are many benefits to outsourcing your messaging needs to a professional hosting company.  This article will go over some of the most significant.

Secure Webmail Access

Email hosting providers generally equip their mail servers with industry standard 128-bit encryption, which is active during the entire webmail session.  This essentially means that any data sent to and from the server is encrypted from the moment you sign in, until the moment you sign out.  With this proven security protocol, you can ensure that your sensitive messages will not be intercepted or compromised in any way.

Secure IMAP and POP Access

Businesses are increasingly opting for email hosting solutions because they enable secure access to desktop email clients through IMAP or POP.  All email traffic is encrypted, including user names and passwords sent from the email client to the mail server for authentication.  The best hosting providers support all the popular mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, Eudora, Mozilla Thunderbird and Apple Mail.  Some even offer support for Linux and BSD clients as well as PDAs and pocket PCs.  Whether you prefer to manage your mail on or offline, an email hosting plan can ensure that is done in an efficient and secure manner.

Adequate Storage Space

When signing up a for an email hosting account, you typically get a robust amount of storage for each mailbox created.  Some give you MB of storage; others give you GB per mailbox.  All tend to provide you with more than enough to efficiently store tens of thousands of messages.  A more flexible solution will allow you to easily upgrade as your storage needs increase.

Spam and Virus Filtering

A quality email hosting solution blocks potentially harmful mail before it even enters the network.  Anti-virus scanners are usually integrated into the host’s SMTP gateways while spam is dealt with in numerous ways.  A company that truly wants to help keep spam out your life will employ filtering methods such as blacklisting, white listing and grey listing, and allow you to make a configuration that automatically sends it to a quarantine folder instead of your inbox.

For more visit: www.version-next.com

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Posted in E-mail marketing, Tutorials, Version Next Technologies

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Cleaning Mailing List.

January 20th, 2011

Often, you get a lot of returned mail after sending out your newsletters to a mailing list. To clean the list by removing all the faulty email,

1) Store all those email in a new folder in your Outlook Express.

2) Install Extract DBX, extract the dbx file to individual .eml file.
3) Install Email Bounce Handler; drag all those .eml files to the program.
4) Export faulty email address to a text file.
5) Process it at Group Mail, using Purge from group function.

6) Export only the info needed for mailing, when possible. Many contact database programs have wizards that make it easy to specify which fields to export. Skip the phone numbers, email addresses and other data that isn’t relevant for addressing.

7) Make column headings or field names clear. If you have multiple address fields, label the column you want to use as the primary address as “Mailing address.” This will help you better manage the data for future mailings and takes the guesswork out of addressing your mail pieces.

8) When you need to include Customer IDs in the mailing, instruct your mailing services provider on which fields to use to ensure accuracy.

9) If the software that generates your list can export the data in a variety of formats, check with your mail house staff on the best format to use. They can advise you on what format would be both easiest for you to manage, and a format they can use to process your list.

10) If the list will be broken into separate mailings, such as staggered mailings with weekly drops, let your mail house know how you want the delivery sequence to happen. Which states, regions or customers should get them first, second, and so on? A good mail house can work with you to sort or split the list based on your plan.

11) To help avoid delays, take a few minutes to review your list before sending it to your mail house. If it looks confusing, seems to be missing critical address data or doesn’t match your instructions, use the tips above to clean it up or call your mail house for assistance early in the process.

For more visit: www.version-next.com

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Posted in E-mail hosting, Email tutorial and setup

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10 Ways to Get More Clicks in Your Email Campaigns.

December 21st, 2010

We all want our recipients to open our email campaigns, right? But it’s what happens after the open we’re truly concerned about. We want our recipients to read our articles and take action whether it’s buying a product, service or donating to our cause. Here are ten easy actions you can take and put to work in your email marketing campaigns that might just get them clickin’.

1. More Links – Obviously you’ll link your call-to-action such as “Click Here”, but try linking your words within your article or pitch. You might find that people will respond better to more links.

2. Link Your Headlines – If you write a newsletter and you’ve got headlines for your articles, try linking the entire headline. If you sell a product link the product name.

3. Link Your Images – People are used to being taken somewhere when they click on an image. If you’ve got an image that relates to your product or cause, link it!

4. Include a Table of Contents – Let people get to the content they want to see fast by using anchor tags in your table of contents at the top of your email. There are however, issues with anchor tags not working properly for Outlook 2007 and a few other email clients so those who read their emails using these clients won’t be able to click.

5. Tease Them – Include half the story in your email and link off to the other half. Make sure in your link you tell them there is more to read. A good suggestion might be “Click to finish reading this fantastic article…” or something of that nature. Then on the page you direct them to, you can include offers that relate to your content.

6. Link Your Offer – If you’ve discounted a product make sure you link either the text or the image you use.

7. Free Gift – Give a free gift with purchase or donation, but only tell them what it is if they click on the link. Then you’ve got more real estate on the page to tell your story.

8. Give an Expiration Date – See how crazy Neiman Marcus went with their two-hour sale email. Make sure you link the date to where you want them to go.

9. Link to a Customer Video – Perhaps you’ve got a customer who made a video about your business. Why not link to it in your emails? Nothing sells you better than one of your customers plus your customer will tell all of his friends about it.

10. Personalize Your Links – If you’ve got a special offer, why not try including your recipients name in the link. “John, click here for your special discount” or “Stanley, click here to learn more about how you can save the Bay.”

The more clicks the better. Get linking!



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Posted in E-mail hosting, E-mail marketing, Email tutorial and setup

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The Value of SPF Records.

December 13th, 2010

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework and it is the standard established in RFC 4408. Essentially, SPF validates emails sent to a mail server to determine if a message is spam. One of the biggest problems faced by ISPs trying to fight spam is the spoofing of IP addresses and domains. In such cases, blacklisting an IP address has little effect, since the spammer can use false ones. SPF is a system for validating emails before they are delivered.

SPF works by not allowing senders to forge FROM addresses. When a server establishes its mail server, it will broadcast that it only sends mail from certain systems. If a machine not on the list sends a message from the domain, the SPF-enabled server will reject it.

The benefit of SPF is that ISPs and hosting providers can set standards for mail delivery, denying message senders that do not provide valid SPF records. The unfortunate reality, however, is that the standard requires ISP adoption, and without it, SPF records are rather useless. If, for example, one ISP enforces the standard but another does not, spam can still be sent from one to the other.

It is not terribly difficult to setup SPF records on your dedicated server. Once setup, it does not require any further action on your part, and you will be contributing to create a more clutter-free Internet.

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Posted in Dedicated Servers, E-mail hosting, Email tutorial and setup, Webmail Tutorial

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Limitations with WordPress.

October 6th, 2010

WordPress.com provides some great functionality, but for security and performance reasons, they have had to disable a number of features on the WordPress software provided through the service. While these limitations are not fatal, they can be annoying if not kept in mind during the content development process. Thankfully, there are workarounds.

50MB upload limit

WordPress.com limits the space available for uploads to 50MB. They would really like it if you just paid for an “upgrade” to access more drive space – it’s not expensive, but there are other options.

  • pay WordPress.com $20US per year to get 1GB of upload space
  • use separate file upload services, including (but not limited to):
    • DivShare.com (all file types)
    • OurMedia.org (all media file types)
    • Flickr.com (free or subscription-based – photos and images only)
    • YouTube.com (free, video only, up to 10 minutes in length)
    • Google Video (free, video only, any length)

No Custom CSS

You aren’t able to modify the CSS to change things like fonts, colours, or images used by the theme. This is generally not an issue, but if that level of customizability becomes necessary, a WordPress.com upgrade is available which allows custom CSS for $15US per year.

Limited filetypes allowed for uploading

For security reasons, WordPress.com only allows uploading of files using the following extensions (and there is no workaround, except for using an alternate file hosting service for those files).

  • .jpg
  • .jpeg
  • .png
  • .gif
  • .pdf
  • .doc
  • .ppt

Limited media embedding

WordPress.com will remove the object and embed HTML elements from content, meaning you can’t just paste a media service’s “embed this” code to place a video or other piece of media within a page or blog post on WordPress.com. Both YouTube and Google Video are supported via a custom embed format, as well as some other services via VodPod.

No Custom Themes

Users are not allowed to edit their themes, nor may they add a new custom theme to the service. There is no workaround, while using the WordPress.com service.

Portability

Even if you get started using WordPress.com and outgrow its limitations, it’s not the end of the world. Your website is completely portable! WordPress offers an export/import function, meaning you can pack up your stuff, move to your own server, and import it there. There’s no lock-in, aside from the URL used to access the site.

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Posted in Wordpress Tutorial

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An electronic mailing list.

September 28th, 2010

An electronic mailing list is a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to its members or customers, but typically refers to four things — a list of email addresses, the people (“subscribers”) receiving mail at those addresses, the publications (e-mail messages) sent to those addresses, and a reflector, which is a single e-mail address that, when designated as the recipient of a message, will send a copy of that message to all of the subscribers.

How automated electronic mailing lists work
Electronic mailing lists are usually fully or partially automated through the use of special mailing list software and a reflector address that are set up on a server  capable of receiving email. Incoming messages sent to the reflector address are processed by the software, and, depending on their content, are acted upon internally (in the case of messages containing commands directed at the software itself) or are distributed to all e-mail addresses subscribed to the mailing list. Depending on the software, additional addresses may be set up for the purpose of sending commands.

Many electronic mailing list servers have a special email address in which subscribers (or those that want to be subscribers) can send commands to the server to perform such tasks as subscribing and unsubscribing, temporarily halting the sending of messages to them, or changing available preferences. The common format for sending these commands is to send an email that contains simply the command followed by the name of the electronic mailing list the command pertains to. Examples: subscribe anylist or subscribe anylist John Doe. Some list servers also allow people to subscribe, unsubscribe, change preferences, etc. via a website.

Electronic mailing list servers can be set to forward messages to subscribers of a particular mailing list either individually as they are received by the list server or in digest form in which all messages received on a particular day by the list server are combined into one email that is sent once per day to subscribers. Some mailing lists allow individual subscribers to decide how they prefer to receive messages from the list server (individual or digest).

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Posted in E-mail hosting, E-mail marketing, Email tutorial and setup

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Risks & problems in email hosting.

September 24th, 2010

For corporations with more than a hundred mailboxes, the requirement for their email facilities is clearly more demanding than that of small business users. Email archiving, privacy and escalation are important issues that they have to be deal with. It is therefore important for corporations to understand the risks and problems involved, in order to find the best way to streamline their email infrastructure. Here are some things to consider:

1) Limited email storage: Having trouble with limited email storage? For those of you who are outsourcing your email services, chances are you’ve been allocated with a limited storage facility that will be split up between a huge numbers of users.

For those of you who are hosting your own email service, the problem is probably due to limited storage space. It seems not many email service providers care enough to upgrade their storage space, although hard drives are a lot cheaper nowadays.

With limited storage, such as 200MB per mailbox, users can’t even leave a copy of their messages in the server. Instead, they have to download and delete emails frequently, even when they are on holiday, because otherwise, the mailbox will be full. Because of this, their webmail becomes useless as their Webmail’s Inbox is always empty.

2) Upkeep of mailboxes

Here’s another thing, tech people are usually reluctant to maintain the mailboxes hosted in their email servers. Why? Because they’re offered unlimited mailbox plans. This means, they don’t have to remove the mailbox of the staff who’s just left, or check if the forwarding features are correctly configured. This poses a risk to businesses.

3) Lost emails: Have you ever lost an email? It is likely that this happened because your email service provider has a poorly configured scanner that filters and drops legitimate emails into your Spam box. When this happens, who’s to blame? Their Spam tech are pretty unreliable. The real nightmare, however, occurs, when you’ve lost your email completely! Most email servers are setup on a small scale. This means, you have all your email services (POP, SMTP, Webmail, etc) installed in a single physical server. What would you do if you lost your email? Is there an archiving solution that keeps a copy of all your incoming and outgoing emails in a safe place?

4) Why isn’t my email working?
A lot of shared hosting customers use their accounts for email and that’s about it. Because of this, a lot of questions are about email. Common reasons for email not working are:

  • The entire account and/or email account are exceeding their respective disk quotas
  • The password is incorrect
  • The account is configured incorrectly
  • There is a server level issue.

To fix these issues, check out your account and the configuration of your account in your email client first. See if email can be sent from webmail. If it can, then the problem is likely with the configuration of your desktop client. Try setting it up again, and if it still doesn’t work, ask your host to check into the account further.

5) Email privacy: Did you know that ANY email hosting provider can access your email account? They also have 101 ways to keep a tab on your email activity without you being aware of it! Just like a car manufacturer will have their 101 ways to start your car without a key, the same goes with email service providers. So pick a reliable one, one that you can trust, and make sure that it has the facility and trained personnel to make sure your data is safe. Make sure they can handle your email’s privacy carefully too!

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Posted in E-mail hosting, Reseller hosting

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What Email Marketing Can Do to Boost Your Business

July 17th, 2010

Email marketing is by far the most cost effective method of promoting any business. Any business, whether it be internet based or a bricks and mortar business.

Unlike the spam mail you may be getting bombarded with daily in your email you can build a relationship with your current and potential customers using email and it is easier than you may think.

The first thing you need to do is offer a free report, download, newsletter, or something that will entice visitors to subscribe to your list. This means that you are collecting email details from people who genuinely are keen to obtain information from you on a regular basis. It also provides the option of stopping receiving information at any time.

The terms used to do this form of collection of emails is commonly called subscribers, leads, or opt-ins – all meaning the same thing.

The most powerful part of email marketing is that you can automate it. Setup your emails to send at scheduled times so you don’t have the worry of meeting deadlines. You can broadcast special emails to your list fast and easy.

Of course there is the cost effectiveness and environmental advantages of using email. Instead of printing flyers and having them delivered to homes and businesses you can send your information direct via email to those who genuinely want to hear from you.

Further environmental impact minimization of paper wastage and other resources that are involved in the production of traditional flyer marketing.

Email marketing need not only consist of text, you can include images and videos.

Email marketing builds a relationship between your business and the recipients simply because they want to receive information from you. This trust creates business relationships that are financially powerful over the long term.

It does not matter what type of business you have email marketing works. Not only is it a powerful marketing option but it is really very very inexpensive as most businesses have email available to them as a minimum.

Another advantage of email marketing is it is measurable. With conventional marketing it is very hard to know who is reading/watching, normally only snapshots can be provided only. With email marketing you know who has opened your email and what they have done after opening the email. This makes each and every email you send 100% measurable!

Email marketing is a major boost for business. Email will continue to develop into being one of the most popular and expected forms of marketing contact.

About the Author
Katherine Quirke is a successful Australian based business entrepreneur with an IT background, has owned a number of businesses over the last 20 years. She also runs and owns an art gallery. Sharing her business knowledge is a passion. For more information on creating email marketing visit: http://www.version-next.com/email-hosting/index.html

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