Tag Archives: e-mail

How to Organize Home E-Mail

Being organized can make your life a lot easier and your home more pleasant to live in. Having a chaotic e-mail system can put a lot of stress on your and waste hours weeding through things. It can also cause issues if you do electronic banking or miss important notices and appointments. Here are some tips on how to keep all of your e-mail organized. You should treat e-mail the same way you would traditional mail. All e-mail should fall into one of three categories: Delete, To Do, Archive. First start with setting up folders to reflect the above categories. … Continue reading →

The E-mail Trap (Checking E-mail in Off Hours)

Occasionally, I just can’t help and I check my work e-mail in my off hours–sometimes it is no big deal and I can check quickly and then head off to do something else. Other times, I get sucked into the vortex of work and even though it is my own fault, I just can’t seem to stay true to my boundaries. While it may be possible to check one’s e-mail and set things aside to do later, it can also be a trap–we think we’ll just take a peek and before we know it, we are working away… If it … Continue reading →

E-mailing Schedules

The other day, I got the most incredible e-mail. My eldest daughter sent me an e-mail listing the activities she’d scheduled for the coming week—including who she was going to be hanging out with, any money she might need, and other savory details. I have to tell you it was an organized mom’s dreams come true! I thought it was even better than having her tell me a half dozen times or put them on the kitchen calendar. Not only do I have the e-mail document, but I was able to jot things down into my datebook while I was … Continue reading →

Check Your Junk E-mail Periodically

I am sure that this is a “basic” lesson for the home business owner, but periodically, I find that important e-mails have found their way into my junk-email folder or my junk suspects folder in my e-mail inbox. A couple days might go by and I forget to peek in there and see if there is anyone or anything I really need to know about and inevitably I find someone important! I know that there are ways to make sure that people do NOT end up in the junk suspects or junk mail folder, but I do not always remember … Continue reading →

How About an Online Survey?

Sure, you might be using your business web site for marketing and sales, but have you considered ways you can use it to gather information from your prospects and customers and use it to improve your products or service delivery? One way is to use your business web site for an online survey. I am not talking about those annoying pop-up surveys that seem to be just ways to gather people’s contact information and make sales presentations—although the prevalence of those on the internet probably tells us that people like to take surveys. Instead, you can create one on your … Continue reading →

Sending Articles as a Way of Touching Base

Do you ever feel like your “reaching out” to prospects and customers (or colleagues, vendors, etc.) is getting boring? Or maybe you have a hard time figuring out when or how to touch base with people without seeming pushy or dorky? One easy way to make a “non asking” connection is to consider sending articles that you think will be of interest to individuals you are trying to cultivate. With the advent of the internet, it has become so easy to include a link or paste a page and send along an article to someone in your contact circle. This … Continue reading →

E-mail Marketing—Make Sure You Let People “Opt Out”

In some of the work I do, I use e-mail as a major marketing tool. I have found that many people are now afraid of using e-mail for marketing, fearing that they will be considered “Spam-ers.” There is a way to be respectful and not annoying, and still have the ease and inexpensiveness of e-mail marketing. When I do e-mail marketing, I e-mail only to those people who have said that they want to be contacted this way—either by giving their e-mail or registering (on paper or web site) for e-mail updates. This is not enough, however. I think it … Continue reading →

Happy Birthday to :-)

Can you believe that the 🙂 is 25 years old? That is right, the little colon-dash-right parenthesis smiley face has a birthday, at least according to the guy who claims to have invented it. Scott E. Fahlman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University says that he came up with the idea of using those three keystrokes to produce a sideways smiley face, exactly 25 years ago yesterday. Fahlman says he posted the smiley in a message to an online electronic bulletin board. The board messages were discussing the limits of online humor and how to make it known that some … Continue reading →

Identifying E-Mail Hoaxes: Protecting Yourself

Do you know how to protect yourself and your family from an e-mail hoax? Some hoaxes are time wasters that clutter your inbox, while others are more dangerous hoaxes that may cost you money or compromise your safety. If you missed it, you might want to check out Identifying E-Mail Hoaxes. Here are some ways to snoop out the phony stuff. When in doubt, delete it out. If you get an e-mail from someone you don’t recognize, the easiest thing to do is to simply delete it. You can also create filters in your e-mail program that only let in … Continue reading →

Computing Review: September 8th Through September 14th

Have you ever been a victim of an e-mail hoax? The answer is probably, yes. Did you did forward that message about the missing child, or the one about the everyday product that could cause cancer? We’ve started a new series here in the Computing Blog all about e-mail hoaxes. If you missed the beginning of the series, you can click below to review. Other interesting blogs this week include some tips on what to do if you accidentally sent out an e-mail that you shouldn’t have sent. Here is the Computing Blog Week in Review for September 8th Through … Continue reading →