Email is a wonderful tool, outstandingly if used properly.
I’m voice of a platoon of five or six friends, who “physically” acquire together most weekends (as opposed to practically). We also email each other, most often every few days, to predominantly commerce jokes, interest rumour, and deliberate over scheduling problems to do with when we are next getting together. We are starting to talk on Runner too.
Inseparable Monday a insufficient weeks ago, our emailing rate out of the blue spiked to more than thirty emails in upon twelve hours. Unfortunately this was a some days after someone recent had precisely joined our group. Luckily she didn’t run away in shock, and things calmed down.
Things indeed NEEDED to self-control down because most of the thirty plus emails were coming from a spar between two of my friends. I’ll dial them Katrina and Chris.
Hopefully, reading this article won’t restart the fight. (If it does I’ll expect an inflamed email or two saying, ‘I won’t be coming on Sunday…or ever again.’)
Suffer to me repeat. Email is wonderful, if employed right. After the action cooled down a itty-bitty, Chris even mentioned that the creation of sending and receiving emails allows one to think before you reply, if you assume the time.

If someone emails you and says you are an idiot, you can safely author a register the scathing acknowledge you hope for to, generous of all conduct of the foulest insults and immoral language. I commend you dash off perfectly such a brutish answer.
But annul it with a declaration processor program, rather than directly into a helpless email. You travel all kinds of assistant with spelling, editing, and punctuation. It is massively uncomfortable to rub someone up the wrong way an email saying that you are an idiot, and then sooner a be wearing balance out identical misspelled suggestion in your (meant to be) derisive reply.
The more urgent reason to a postcard your reply in a facts processor is that you can’t click ‘send’ the minute you set free writing. You can’t cannonade it incorrect without hole a new email and then ‘cut-and-pasting’ your acidic words into it, which gives you a tick to unflappable down.
In a perfect world, give yourself an hour or more to premeditated down in a condition as this. After half an hour, reread the email you are responding too. Did they express ‘you are an idiot’, or ‘you look like an idiot when you don’t spell curb’?

If you hadn’t guessed already, Katrina and Chris didn’t extract an hour, or metrical a few minutes to refreshing down first replying to each others emails. In the main, both are more matter-of-fact so perchance they honest had an off-day on the very day. Or, perhaps they had legal and honest complaints round each other that needed to be discussed and resolved.
Regardless of why they did it, they then traded a series of steadily more insulting emails, replying to each other without fetching convenience life to self-control down. Our group received more than thirty emails. One email in one way got sent to ‘undisclosed recipients’, which sparked accusations of outlandish overlie ups involving secretly sharing our privileged business with mysterious shadowy strangers.
In the final analysis they took their struggle to a more private prone, no longer ‘CC’ing their insults to the zizz of us. In this not for publication stock market I over the insults got even more vicious.
No longer getting ‘CC’ed emails, from either Chris to Katrina or Katrina to Chris, I thought that they both had calmed down and grown up. Then pass‚ of the blue, both of them emailed me offering to sip out-dated of the group. We about spent them both because they couldn’t suffer to be in the same room together after what they’d said in their rapid-fire emails. I knackered days talking to them both on Page to thing of a sort it out. We did orderly be beaten Chris in requital for a few weeks. At any rate, I port side the door unhindered in behalf of him to resurface and eventually he did.
Email is a wonderful tool. But be careful, you can burn your bridges if you don’t reject it with a cool head.

Most businesses spent time attracting customers to a product or service, trying to win their trust and then ending the whole process with a sale. That tactic seems obvious to most people. What often is neglected is the post-sale follow up with customers, particularly when it comes to online businesses. We should look at the time after a sale as an opportunity not only to improve our products but also to establish long-lasting relationships with our customers.

It takes much more effort to win a new customer than to maintain a relationship with an existing customer. But maintaining current customer relationships is just as critical and I’d even dare to say, more important than gaining new customers. What can we do to keep our established customers feel appreciated? You need to follow up with your customers.

Following up may be as simple as writing an email or giving a phone call to a customer a few weeks after a sale. At Screaming Bee, I make it a personal goal to contact every customer that buys our voice-changing software, MorphVOX, within 2-3 weeks after a sale.

Does this take time? It sure does. Is it worth it? Absolutely! Not only does this allow us to get good feedback from customers in order to improve our software, but also it establishes a more solid, long-lasting relationship that goes beyond the point-of-sale.

Most people were surprised that I would be willing spend the time to talk with them and were touched by the personal attention they received. And I was also surprised at how uncommon it was for online businesses to follow up on their customers. Some of the typical comments that I have received as the result of my efforts include:

”I really appreciate the personal touch, vs. the usual automated ‘we have received your email’ garbage, followed by… well, nothing usually…”

”Huh, never had customer support quite like this I appreciate it…”

People don’t like being ignored and definitely like being heard. There are many businesses that are ignoring their customers and, as a result, losing them.

Your current customers are the heart and core of your business. These customers provide return business and also provide the essential word-of-mouth promotion that no clever advertisement or marketing scheme will ever out-perform. Treat your customers like your own family. Go out of your way to communicate with them. If you neglect them, they will go elsewhere.

How to defeat spam at the roots

Just about everyone goes trough the hassle of removing unnessecary spam
in their inbox every day. If you have a fresh and unused email address and
want it so stay clean of spam mails then you should consider these steps bellow.

But to understand why you should consider these steps we will talk
about spiders (also known as: bots,address harvester,parser,the list goes on..) first.

Never think your email address is safe because a human beeing has to register or do any
other fancy stuff to see your address. And please consider that today almost anything
is beeing spidered by google and other bigger search engines. That means that entering
your email address in private guestbooks or bulleting boards is not safe at all,
because it is indexed by these engines. Most email address harvester start their search
in the big indexes like google,dmoz or yahoo.

In these days you can automate about everything a human can do except writing semaphorically
correct letters or articles. Even if you display your email address
as an image on your bussiness website the bots will be able to decipher it
and get your mailbox filled with unnesecary spam.

A good script or bot can even knock out these fancy captchas.

7 steps how you can avoid getting your new email address awash with spam.

1. Do not enter your real email address in guestbooks or bulletin boards (even if they are register only).
2. Do not activate images or even html emails in your email client. When loading images there is the risk that you will send your identification to the spammers server and he will set your email address to valid (and probably resell it).
3. If you really want to give your email address away, you should obfuscate it as much as possible (still human readable though). As an example for your.nameexample.com use your[dot]name(at)example[dot]com, this will not stop all the bots but you will get less spam for sure.
4. If you have your own domain you should use the catch all function and use email addresses like .iregisterhere.comyourdomain.com so you can always block that specific address when someone begins sending spam or sold your address.
5. If you only want to read some information on a register only bulletin board or site you should use a disposable email address like .mailslapping.com/ .
6. Use a good antivirus and mal-,spy- and adware detection tool. They often steal your addressbook and resell the addresses, including your own.
7. Do not use those fancy and 99 percent useless browser toolbars. They often include malware and/or spyware that can even capture data you enter in web forms.

You are on the safe side if you do not blindly trust the sites which want you to enter your
email address. If you use your email address for direct contact with a serious business or company
there is most likely no harm. Deactivate HTML rendering of your emails in the mail client of your choice.

If you use a email address from a free service like GMX, Yahoo, or your local provider. There is most
likely an option which lets you filter spam on the server. This way you can stop spam before its in your
inbox. Its always better to block aggressive and explicitly allow the sender addresses you want. This way you
probably loose a mail or two, but it is not an email from someone you really need to receive mails.

There are also some good blacklists out there. If you can configure your mailserver to use them (or your mailclient) then
you really should. These blacklists grow everyday and are pretty well up to date. One of them is SpamHaus (just google for email blacklist).

It depends on your needs but the more of these steps you can follow the less spam you will get.

It’s time to beat the old bad customer service drum again. I know, I’m sick of beating the drum, too, but as long as bad customer service runs rampant through so many businesses I feel it is my entrepreneurial duty to bring it to your attention. So grab a pew and prepare to listen to the sermon I’ve preached before: bad customer service is the bane of business. If the Almighty smote down every business that dispenses bad customer service, the world would be a much friendlier, albeit much sparser place. Consider a world without malls and fast food joints… would it really be so bad?

What puzzles me most is if bad customer service is such a death knell for business, why do so many businesses allow it to go on? Don’t they read my column, for Pete’s sake? I think the problem is that most bad customer service is doled out (or at least condoned) by business owners and managers who have ceased caring what their customers think. When you stop caring what your customers think it’s time to close the doors. Go find a day job. You’ll make someone a wonderfully disgruntled employee.

My latest parable of lousy customer service was actually experienced by my better half while attempting to buy my daughter a pair of basketball shoes. I won’t mention the name of the sporting goods chain store in which the bad customer service took place, but I will tell you that its name is similar to the sound a frog with hiccups might make.

As my wife waited for someone to assit, the four or five teenagers who had been charged with manning the store stood in a clump at the cash register giggling and flirting with one another as if they were at the prom instead of at work.

When my wife pointed out this fact, one of the employees, a cheeky lass of 16 or so, put her hands on her hips and said, “How rude!” The males in the group didn’t react at all. They were too busy arguing over who could take a break so they could chase other cheeky lasses about the mall.

Needless to say my lovely bride, who has the ability to instill fear into the hearts of even the most worthless employees, left the gaggle of giggling teen idiots standing with their mouths open in disbelief. How dare a customer tell them to do that with a pair of basketball shoes?

As much as I bemoan bad customer service I celebrate good customer service. It should be applauded and the purveyor of said good customer service should be rewarded for actually delivering satisfaction to the customer, above and beyond the call of duty.

So let me tell you the story of my new hero, Ken. I won’t tell you the name of the store in which Ken works, but let’s just say they started out selling radios in a shack somewhere long, long ago.

I first met Ken when I went into the store to buy a mixing board for my business that records audio products for the Web. In a nutshell, you plug microphones into the mixing board then connect it to the computer and you can record audio directly to digital format. Totally beside the point of this article, but I didn’t want you thinking that I was purchasing non-manly cooking utensils.

When I got the mixer installed it didn’t work. So I boxed it up and headed back to the store to return it. When I told Ken my problem he didn’t just grunt and give me my money back as so many bad customer service reps would do. Instead he asked, “Do you mind if I try it?”

“Knock yourself out,” was my reply, confident that if I couldn’t get it to work, neither could Ken. Ken took the mixer out of the box and went about hooking it up to one of the computers on display. He started pulling power cords and cables off the display racks and ripping them open and plugging them in. He tore open a new microphone and an adapter and kept going until he had the mixer hooked up and working. Yes, I said working. It turns out the mixer was fine. I just had the wrong power adapter.

Ken could have just given me my money back and been done with me. Instead he spent 15 minutes and opened a number of other packages that I was under no obligation to buy just to help me get the thing working.

I was so impressed that I not only kept the mixing board, I also bought another $50 worth of products. And the next time I need anything electronic guess where I will buy it? Even if it costs twice as much, I’ll buy it from Ken.

Now here’s the moral of the story: if you are a business owner who has a gaggle of teenagers in charge of customer service at your store you would be better off replacing them with wild monkeys.

At least monkeys can be trained.

Does your company have an email policy? Did you even know there was such a thing? Well, there is, and if your company doesn’t have one you are not only risking the professional image of your firm, but also risking potential liability issues that may arise from the misuse of your company email system.

Having a published email policy accomplishes three objectives.

First, it teaches your employees how to use email in a professional manner. What’s that? You’ve never really given much thought about the emails your employees send out? Well, you should, because ill-composed and unprofessional emails not only reflect on the employee, but on you and your company, as well.

Chances are most of your employees don’t even spell check the emails they send to your customers and partners. Chances are even greater that they are sending other items through your company email system that may get you sued.

Consider this: if one of your male employees sends an email to a female employee that might be considered harassing in nature, you may be judged to be just as liable for damages when her attorney comes calling with harassment suit in hand.

Creating a company email policy also helps lay out the ground rules for personal use of company email. When an employee is on your clock, using your computer equipment, and your network, and your resources they should understand that personal emails should not be sent or received using the company email system.

This can be a hard rule to enforce, given that kids now email their moms at work after school and soccer coaches email everybody, but as a rule, personal use of the company email system should not be allowed.

An effective company email policy also helps cover your corporate backside against liability. Take the example above of the potential harassment suit caused by an insulting email. If your company has a clearly-stated email policy that details what is considered inappropriate, you can minimize the company’s liability by proving that employees were trained in the proper use of email.

If you can prove that employees knew that sending such emails were not acceptable under company policy, your liability can be greatly lessened.

Having a good email policy can also give you a competitive advantage over the competition. As email becomes the professional communication medium of choice, composing professional, thoughtful emails can truly put your company ahead of the pack.

I can tell you from experience that I have actually won contracts simply because the customer was impressed that I replied to his email quickly and professionally. In other words, I’ve made thousands of dollars just because I respond quickly and use a spellchecker. Is this a great country or what?

How do you create an email policy? If you have other existing policies in place, such as those that pertain to business communications, access to confidential materials, personal use of the telephone, sexual harassment, etc. you should be able to establish an email policy using the existing policies as guidelines.

If you need to start from scratch you can still write the policy yourself with a little time and research, however, many companies rely on professional consultants to do the job for them. When you realize the importance of an email policy and understand the ramifications of not having one, you’ll probably agree that its money well-spent.

An email policy doesn’t have to be a long, drawn out document. Most policies are no more than a few pages long, written in plain English that every employee can easily understand.

The key to the success of your company email policy lies in the training of your employees. You can’t just establish a policy and expect everyone to follow blindly. Once the policy is written it should be distributed to employees and can even become part of future employment contracts. Explain the policy to your employees and have them read and sign to signify that they understand and will adhere to the rules.

Many companies are now realizing the importance of email and are putting on training seminars that not only teach their employees how to stick to the policy, but how to compose and respond to emails, as well.

Here’s to your success!