Computer and Web Articles

Do your outgoing emails end with your name? If so, you’re overlooking one of the easiest marketing opportunities available: the simple email signature.

You send out many emails each month. Some recipients know you. Others do not. Some recipients know a little about what you do, others know little to nothing. Providing non-intrusive information at the bottom of your emails gives new people the opportunity to learn about you, others the opportunity to refresh their memories about what you offer, and friends, colleagues, and clients an easy way to retrieve your contact information when needed.

Which of the following pieces of information would help market your company or be of use to email recipients?

• Your position at the company
• Company logo
• Phone numbers
• Fax #
• Website address
• Company tagline or description
• Skype name
• Link to your Twitter account
• Link to your Facebook account
• Link to your LinkedIn account
• Pleasant invitation for people to contact you in regards to certain topics/with questions
• List of services you specialize in
• Photo of yourself
• Link to a map of your store
• Link to a page where people can sign up for your newsletter
• Current promotion
• Link to your company’s page on a reviews site like Yelp! or TripAdvisor.com

To learn how to add informative email signatures to the bottom of all emails you send, Google “add email signature XYZ program” (without the quotes, and with XYZ program being the email program you use).

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Filters, reports, daily and weekly digests, an intelligent “Hot Tasks” algorithm that automatically prioritizes your tasks and makes suggestions about what to do first –Producteev’s got it all. Sound interesting? Could this be a good fit for your workflow? Take Producteev for a test drive by using their simple, free plan. A two-person account runs $5/month and an unlimited-person account with 500MB of storage runs $20/month. Learn more at www.producteev.com.

Question:

Hi Erin. I enjoy your weekly tips article in the Summit Daily, and last week’s section on the “fancy font” made me think of a question about fonts I’ve had for a long time: I have thousands of fonts on my computer. If I send a Word document or email message using a font that the receiving person does not have, can they still “read” my message/font? Thanks. – Mike

Answer:

That is a really great question, Mike. The first half of the answer is yes, your recipient will indeed be able to read that message you typed out using your beautiful font. The second half of the answer is no, he won’t see your message the same way you did when you wrote it.

Because the font you used is not installed on your recipient’s machine, his computer will substitute another (likely less beautiful) font in its place.

Are the email replies you receive addressing only a portion of your points or questions? Perhaps some of your emails go completely unanswered? Following the (very simple) tips below can make it easier and more convenient for your recipients to reply–which ultimately increases your odds of receiving timely, meaningful responses.

• Make sure your requests are clear and direct. Open-ended take more time and energy to process. Replying to “Maybe we should ask John if he can help with the site?” takes far more work than replying to “Call John tomorrow and explain the issues we’re encountering on Page Y of our website. Please email me back once you’ve confirmed he’ll be able to work on the issue and when he expects the fix to be completed.”
• Use meaningful titles in your subject lines. Emails with vague subject lines (such as “Hi!” or “Question” or “XYZ project”) are often given less attention than emails with subject lines containing clear calls to action or requests (such as “Project Summary Report Needed by 3pm Friday“). Esteemed blogger and consultant Chris Brogan suggests going a step further and capitalizing your subject line’s major point, such as “MAINTENANCE SCHEDULING: Check Tuesday or Friday.”
• Provide Deadlines (if applicable): Work to keep your emails from being placed in the “I’ll-respond-when-I-have-the-time” category by providing clear deadlines, such as “Please confirm or reschedule by 10am tomorrow.”
• Keep it Short and Sweet: Though easy for many people, I personally find this tactic the most challenging, by far. Brevity is beauty when it comes to crafting emails which require replies. Help your recipients quickly determine what you need by stripping out the unnecessary and placing your most important points at the top.

Look out Skype. Google’s trying to take over your part of the world, too.

Call your friend who’s sitting at home. Call your sister who’s out and about on her cell. Call your co-worker on his computer while he’s working at the office. Call them all from Gmail. It’s easy. Just download and install the Gmail Voice & Video Chat plugin right here: http://www.google.com/chat/voice/.

And here’s the sweetest part of it all: calls to the U.S. and Canada are actually free until the end of 2010 (and calls to other countries start at 2 cents per minute).

If you’d like to see Google’s clever illustrated video promoting the service, visit: http://tinyurl.com/2dgsxay (Though as the highest-rated commenter on the YouTube page so appropriately noted, “Cavemen at 1000BC? Someone skipped history class.“)

Trying to figure out how you can move all your Outlook Express emails from Windows XP to Windows 7? I’ve got just the article for you! Here you go: http://tinyurl.com/29je46c.

It’s always great when readers write in and share tips they’ve found helpful!

The following tip was shared by a wonderful reader of this article and, though I’m not sure exactly how many people are still using AOL email out there, I’m confident that plenty of you will be delighted by this information. [The information was originally provided by Nancy Leo, an AML legal expert.]

Follow these four super-easy steps to get rid of the footer (you know – the one you didn’t write that contains messages sponsored by outside companies and organizations) displayed at the bottom of all the AOL emails you send out:

1. Go to AOL Mail; in the upper right corner, click on “Settings.”
2. That brings you to “General Settings” - do nothing here.
3. In the left-hand toolbar, click on “Compose.”
4. On the Compose Settings page, at the bottom, for “Message Footer,” click on “Turn on/off message footer.”

That’s it!  All done.

Attention all Gmail users!

No longer must you search through individual eNewsletters from which you wish to unsubscribe, looking for the tiny “Unsubscribe me” or “Remove me from your list” buttons/links. Google has recently added a new feature that makes the process of unsubscribing from just about any newsletter or email list as easy as cake.

To use Gmail’s new feature, simply click the “Report Spam” link, then choose the “Unsubscribe and report spam” button in the box that opens up.

Or, if you’d prefer to unsubscribe from the newsletter without reporting the email as spam, click the “Show details” link in the top-right corner of the email, then click “Unsubscribe from this sender”.

Google will automatically send a request back to the sender on your behalf so they’ll stop emailing you. Like I said — piece of cake!

When you’re using your email program (Outlook, Outlook Express, Mail, Thunderbird, etc.) to send out an email to a group of people who don’t know each other, make sure you don’t drop everyone’s email addresses into the “To” or “CC” fields. Instead, use the BCC field and put your own address in the “To” field.

BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy, and not only should it be used when your recipients don’t know one another, it should also be used when your recipients shouldn’t be able to know who else received your email – as in the case of a company sending out an email to a group of clients.