Find a business email provider

December 30, 2010 – 4:59 pm

When it comes to running a successful business, whether online or on the street, it has gotten to the point where business email may be more important than business phone. In many ways, email is more efficient. Since all of the information is right there on the screen, there is no need to play phone tag in order to verify information. This is why it is very important to decide on an email provider that offers you everything you need. When looking at potential business email providers, it is important to take several factors into consideration.

The first thing to think about is the support structure of the business. It is tempting to think that everything can be automated with the internet, but this simply is not the way that things work in the real world. The internet is still run and used by human beings, and issues can arise as a result. If you discover that your email system is having problems in the middle of the night, the last thing that you want to have to deal with is the fact that the support staff is not available. Of course, it is not only the hours of availability, but the quality of the customer service that counts. If nothing else, a test run should be made by getting in touch with the support staff before setting anything up. In most cases, this is fairly representative of the level of support that you will receive from them when you become a customer. You will also want to avoid a tiered support system. In other words, you want to have a direct line to somebody who can help you, rather than being endlessly redirected to new representatives. Language barriers can also become a problem, so it is a good idea to make sure that the support staff clearly speaks and understands your native language.

Another vital consideration is the level of security offered by the company. A great deal of important business information is sent and received through business email. It is important that any email provider you work with provides you with a secure interface so that there is little chance of company secrets being leaked out. In order to control the physical access to data, there should be several levels of authentication in place. All files sent over email should go through a standardized encryption process to ensure that now third parties obtain access to the information. The provider should also regularly update its IPs in order to ensure that your information is never sent into a recipient’s spam folder. Many email providers that allow bulk emails to be sent end up with blacklisted IPs. Take care to ensure that this is not an issue with any email provider you are considering.

It is also important to make sure that the amount of uptime is high. When a business relies on email for its information, business comes to a halt when the email system stops working. It is always important to check for uptime guarantees. An uptime guarantee is not a promise that the email server will never go down. It is a promise that financial compensation will be offered in the event that it does take place. Any email provider that is not willing to incur penalties for downtime is an email provider that has no direct incentive to avoid downtime. Check the Service Level Agreement of any email provider before agreeing to do business with them. Make sure that the penalties are appropriate enough to motivate the provider to fix issues as quickly as possible.

While it is not a top priority, it can be quite helpful in the operation of a business to find an email provider with a good set of features. The fact of the matter is, choosing the lowest cost email provider is not typically the right choice. This is because of the fact that reduced capabilities can slow down the productivity of the work force. At the same time, it is important not to go overboard with features that are not necessary. This only results in paying more for email than is truly necessary. It is a good idea to choose an email provider that provides a choice between several different platforms. This allows a business to avoid using several different providers in order to take advantage of email related features. It also allows a business to choose the level of features that make sense for its capabilities, and to adjust them in response to changes in business performance.

Finally, price is one of the most important factors to consider when choosing a business email provider. This is fairly obvious, of course. But it is also important to discover to true price of a service before signing up for it. There are several email providers that have numerous hidden fees. Some of them will lock a business into a contract with a great introductory rate, and a horrendous standard rate. Choosing a very low cost option can also be a bad idea, leading to business email which is vulnerable to virus attacks, data loss, and extended periods of downtime. When doing pricing research, it is important to take into account the possibility of hidden fees in the contract, contract terms and changing rates, and the penalties that are incurred for early cancellation, if any exist. When looking for an email provider, a business should be well informed of the contract. They should be on a billing schedule that goes from one month to the next, and the business should have the option of opting out of the service at any time without incurring any penalties. A great deal of shopping around should also be performed in order to find the best price.

By The Email Manager | Posted in Busines Email Hosting | Tagged , | Comments (0)

How Small Businesses Can Benefit From Email Marketing Services

December 14, 2010 – 7:23 pm

Every small business owner is constantly challenged by the need to find new methods of generating revenue. For many businesses, this means tapping into new customers and convincing existing customers to purchase more products and services. In order to do this, many companies employ staff or marketing teams to create and send out email marketing campaigns, which help remind customers of the company’s offerings and nurture relationships. However, creating and tracking these campaigns through the normal channels is incredibly difficult and time consuming, which is why every business should consider investing in an email marketing service.

Every email campaign contains several elements. These elements include the initial message that is used to reach out to a large segment of the customer base or the entire marketing list, follow-up messages that may only be sent to a select group of recipients, and response tracking. Every email must be tailored to appeal to the market segment, sent out at the appropriate time, and be optimized to ensure its delivery to each recipient’s in-box, rather than being flagged as spam, in order to increase the business’s earning potential.

Constructing an email campaign from scratch using a general email client, such as Outlook, is very difficult and time consuming. The staff members who construct the email must have some HTML coding knowledge as well as an understanding of current email best practices. They’ll also need to know what methods current spam filters are utilizing when determining which messages should be flagged as spam and current laws that pertain to sending marketing emails. The process becomes even more complicated when you consider the effort it takes to create a list of message recipients using the typical email service, timing those messages for delivery, tracking message responses, and manually updating opt-out lists in a timely manner, which is required by law.

Using an email marketing service streamlines and speeds up the entire marketing process. A great benefit of using such a service is that nearly anyone can construct a visually pleasing message with the provided marketing tools. Many services offer a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) email editor that makes constructing a message almost as easy as creating a word processing document. There will also be a number of professional email templates to choose from to help you create your messages.

Certain marketing services provide you with a spam checking tool. This tool will assess each of your messages for common spam flags and will alert you when any of those flags are present within your content. By removing the offending content from your emails, you can greatly increase your deliverable, and this may lead to increased customer retention and sales.

One of the most difficult things for marketers to do when using normal email methods for constructing a list of message recipients is to whittle down that list to a specific segment based on a wide range of criteria. Typically, marketers may look through various address books or spreadsheets in order to come up with the list, which is very time consuming. When using email marketing software, the process becomes much easier. Once the database has been uploaded into the application, you can use the provided search engine to segment your database according to a wide range of criteria, including location, revenue, product interests, and much more. Each segment can be named and saved for future reference and updated at any time.

Scheduling your messages and creating drip campaigns can be done within minutes when using an email marketing service. Some services even provide you with a step by step wizard to help you through the entire process, including creating or choosing a message template, selecting the message audience, scheduling the initial send date, and specifying an auto-response email for anyone who opens the message or clicks on a link within the message. It is even possible to set up an automated drip campaign. For example, if you want to hit all of the message recipients who did not view your initial message with a new message at a later date, you can schedule this without having to worry about returning to the software at the right time to manually schedule the message. Some email marketing services will also allow you to create unlimited multistage drip campaigns based on rules that you specify.

In order to be CAN-SPAM compliant, every business must not send any emails to anyone who has opted out from their emails. Opting out people manually is far from foolproof and takes constant dedication. Most, if not all, email marketing applications will automatically remove message recipients from your mailing lists if they click the opt-out link that is included with each of your messages. These applications will also prevent opted out email addresses from being added back into your marketing lists and will prevent them from receiving any future messages.

Every marketing team will benefit from the reporting features of email marketing services. Most services provide a number of standard reporting templates and the ability to create custom templates that display a wide range of data, including the number of delivered emails, opened messages, bounces, and opt-outs. You can also easily compile statistics on message response rates, which is vital to understanding which types of content appeal to your customer base and which types fall flat.

By choosing the appropriate email marketing service for your business, you can speed up the development and deployment of each of your campaigns, and it will be much easier for your to keep in constant contact with your customer base. You may even be able to save money on marketing expenses by having a smaller marketing team and increase sales through reaching out to the right people at the right time.

We have been using Express Email Marketing from HostOtter.com for about two years now and have been extremely happy with the results. We send out campaigns once per week and get complete tracking on who opened the email and whom didnt. Their service is Spam compliant so no need to worry about getting blocked by the big email providers.

By The Email Manager | Posted in Email Marketing | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Microsoft Exchange For Email Hosting

November 18, 2010 – 1:32 am

In today’s world of sophisticated technology and the need to be able to communicate as often as possible; email is the way to go. Businesses rely on email more than any other communications tool. Through email, employees work together to accomplish daily tasks, arrange meetings and other critical business communications are shared.

The technology behind sending and receiving emails must be reliable, dependable and easily implemented. For IT professionals, cost and security is a major requirement for selecting the technology that will serve their email system. And this is where Microsoft Exchange comes into play. Microsoft Exchange is the technology that has become the standard for email systems. Businesses of all sizes utilize Exchange mail hosting for its many benefits and features. Today with the increasing email security threats with evolving spam and viruses, an email system must be protected every second of the day. Microsoft Exchange delivers in the security department for all incoming and outgoing messages to protect all groups involved.

Businesses that primarily use Exchange mail hosting enjoy the protection that Microsoft Exchange provides. If a virus infiltrates an email system, this can bring an entire company’s network down. The average email user can unknowingly open an email attachment that contains a virus or a Trojan. But a business taking advantage of the secure protection that Microsoft Exchange provides doesn’t have to worry about such attacks.

Another great advantage of companies using Exchange mail hosting is that employees can have anywhere access to their email. This is imperative in today’s business world where companies conduct business outside of the traditional 9 to 5 schedule. Through Microsoft Exchange, not only can employees access their inbox anywhere in the world whenever they want, but they can also access their voice mail as well as fax. Of course this will save any business money, because multiple systems aren’t necessary. A business’ productivity can actually increase due to the accessibility that Exchange offers. This is one benefit that any company would love to take full advantage of.

Along with the great accessibility and protection that Microsoft Exchange offers, another big advantage is the ability to collaborate. Employees can share documents and schedules from around the world, as well as find and share data. This is crucial when there’s a deadline and different departments across the country must work together to solve problems. So unless a business trip is absolute necessary, Exchange can eliminate businesses having to pay travel expenses to send employees to other locations. Sharing data, files and documents is an easy task that if implemented properly will make a world of difference when it comes to work flow.

Exchange mail hosting delivers in the speed category for incoming and outgoing messages. Its service works seamlessly, and offers a very familiar Microsoft Outlook experience. There’s no extra software needed for different devices or clients. All that’s required to take advantage of Microsoft Exchange technology is an internet connection and basic phone connectivity. With such little requirements needed a business that wishes to switch their email hosting over to Exchange can be up and running in no time. This is extremely beneficial to IT professionals who work under deadlines to deploy new systems within their companies.

Another great advantage of using Exchange mail hosting is that Microsoft Exchange offers great integration with the broadest range of clients. Businesses receive a complete Outlook experience due to the fact that Exchange supports Outlook on the desktop to Outlook Mobile, Outlook Web Access, as well as Outlook Voice Access. In addition to the great Outlook support, Exchange also integrates easily with Microsoft SharePoint Services, other Office applications and third-party systems as well.

In conclusion, using Exchange mail hosting has great advantages that not only make sense, but can improve the efficiency of a business. The built-in protection feature will keep viruses and unwanted spam from harming the network. It will reduce the stress level of IT professionals with its reliability and easy implementation that’s required to setup the system.

Microsoft Exchange is the technology that will continue to thrive for years to come. Companies that switch over to Exchange mail hosting will greatly improve the efficiency of their employees day to day work schedules.

If you are looking for an exchange provider then we highly recommend going with HostOtter.com because we have been using them for over two years and could not be more satisfied with the service. Their technical support staff is simply unmatched when it comes to troubleshooting your exchange email. Again, we could not be happier

By The Email Manager | Posted in Busines Email Hosting | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Get the facts about Business Email Hosting

November 13, 2010 – 3:39 pm
Buy Business Email Hosting

If you run or own a business, then you are probably faced with a wide variety of decisions, and can easily get overwhelmed by trying to make a big decision like what kind of corporate email solution you want to go with. Let’s take a close look at the different email solutions available to you, and see why business email hosting is your best option.
Kinds of Email Solutions
Free Online Email Solutions
There are many different types of email accounts available. Free, online email accounts are easily available to anyone, but are usually used by consumers. This is for a couple of reasons – for one thing, they usually have very limited storage. Also, they are advertising based and businesses don’t really want to subject their employees to third party advertising. Lastly, the business doesn’t really have much control over the email service – most corporations want to be able to filter, scan, and backup their employee’s email.
Paid Online Email Service
There are also some paid online email services which give you more storage and options, but these are still mainly geared at consumers and don’t offer the flexibility needed by large corporations.
Corporate Online Email Solutions
Google Apps is probably the largest company that offers these corporate type accounts, but that are still based only online. Google hosts the data, but the corporation can have much more control over their user accounts and the settings and options for each one. This is a popular business solution, but still does not offer the absolute security and control that many businesses want.
Business Email Hosting
This is by far the most popular email solution, and for a variety of good reasons. Purchasing and setting up their own hosting gives business complete control over their employee’s data, and allows them to have the control over it that they need. Also, it does not require trusting a third party service with the data (even though a third party hosting company is used, they do not directly run the software used, but leave that up to the individual corporation). Let’s look closer at the features offered by this, and why it is such a popular solution.
Features of Business Email Hosting
You Get the Benefit, Your Host Does the Work
By purchasing hosting form a third party provider, you don’t have to worry about maintaining the servers yourself; a task that can be daunting even for a company with a large IT department. Your host will setup, run, and maintain the servers that you use to host your email. By going with a company that specializes in web hosting, you know that you’re getting a company that knows what they’re doing, and that has all the special accommodations needed for running a server, such as extremely large amounts of bandwidth and specially built data centers.
Most hosting companies offer a couple of different kinds of packages based on how much control you want over your email hosting. You can get a generic web hosting package or dedicated server, and then install and run an email application yourself. This leaves you with a lot of work, and your hosting company generally won’t support any third party applications you install.
A Look at the Email Software
The better option is to go with a hosting package specifically built for email hosting. Your hosting company probably offers a couple of different software solutions. Microsoft Exchange is the most common corporate email solution, and the one you more likely want to use. Exchange is a robust server email program that syncs with Microsoft Outlook on the desktop for a complete email experience. It also offers Outlook Web Access (OWA), which is a browser based email client so that your employees can access their email anywhere, even without Microsoft Outlook installed. It does not offer as many features as the desktop program, and is not a complete replacement for the desktop client.
The other option that many companies offer is some kind of proprietary email solution – an email program that they wrote. This varies by company, so describing an exact feature set is impossible, but contact the company you are looking at to find out more about their email hosting options. Though not as popular as Microsoft Exchange, this may be a good option because the hosting company will ususally provide better support for their custom program and be better able to help you integrate their program with your business.
General Business Email Hosting Features That You May Like
There are a number of features that are common to any custom business email hosting software solution. These features are specifically designed to suit the needs of your business. Here’s a look at common features that you will want.
User Account Management
This is the ability not just to create custom email addresses for each employee, but also to manage, control, and restrict various aspects of their accounts.
Filtering and Monitoring
This will allow you to make sure that your employees aren’t viewing or sending inappropriate material at work, as well as scan email for any other types of content that you wish to monitor or restrict.
Data Security
Business Email Hosting should allow you to keep track of all your employee’s mail, so you can make sure that it’s safe from hackers, as well as back it all up so that you don’t lose important corporate data.
Whatever your business’s needs are, buying business hosting is a great option for an email solution, and provides you with a variety of great options to help you manage large amounts of data and control many user accounts. Contact your hosting company today to find out what kind of options they offer for business email hosting.

Get the facts about Business Email Hosting
Buy Business Email Hosting If you run or own a business, then you are probably faced with a wide variety of decisions, and can easily get overwhelmed by trying to make a big decision like what kind of corporate email solution you want to go with. Let’s take a close look at the different email solutions available to you, and see why business email hosting is your best option.

Kinds of Email Solutions
Free Online Email Solutions
There are many different types of email accounts available. Free, online email accounts are easily available to anyone, but are usually used by consumers. This is for a couple of reasons – for one thing, they usually have very limited storage. Also, they are advertising based and businesses don’t really want to subject their employees to third party advertising. Lastly, the business doesn’t really have much control over the email service – most corporations want to be able to filter, scan, and backup their employee’s email.
Paid Online Email Service
There are also some paid online email services which give you more storage and options, but these are still mainly geared at consumers and don’t offer the flexibility needed by large corporations.
Corporate Online Email Solutions
Google Apps is probably the largest company that offers these corporate type accounts, but that are still based only online. Google hosts the data, but the corporation can have much more control over their user accounts and the settings and options for each one. This is a popular business solution, but still does not offer the absolute security and control that many businesses want.
Business Email Hosting

This is by far the most popular email solution, and for a variety of good reasons. Purchasing and setting up their own hosting gives business complete control over their employee’s data, and allows them to have the control over it that they need. Also, it does not require trusting a third party service with the data (even though a third party hosting company is used, they do not directly run the software used, but leave that up to the individual corporation). Let’s look closer at the features offered by this, and why it is such a popular solution.

Features of Business Email Hosting
You Get the Benefit, Your Host Does the Work
By purchasing hosting form a third party provider, you don’t have to worry about maintaining the servers yourself; a task that can be daunting even for a company with a large IT department. Your host will setup, run, and maintain the servers that you use to host your email. By going with a company that specializes in web hosting, you know that you’re getting a company that knows what they’re doing, and that has all the special accommodations needed for running a server, such as extremely large amounts of bandwidth and specially built data centers.
Most hosting companies offer a couple of different kinds of packages based on how much control you want over your email hosting. You can get a generic web hosting package or dedicated server, and then install and run an email application yourself. This leaves you with a lot of work, and your hosting company generally won’t support any third party applications you install.
A Look at the Email Software
The better option is to go with a hosting package specifically built for email hosting. Your hosting company probably offers a couple of different software solutions. Microsoft Exchange is the most common corporate email solution, and the one you more likely want to use. Exchange is a robust server email program that syncs with Microsoft Outlook on the desktop for a complete email experience. It also offers Outlook Web Access (OWA), which is a browser based email client so that your employees can access their email anywhere, even without Microsoft Outlook installed. It does not offer as many features as the desktop program, and is not a complete replacement for the desktop client.
The other option that many companies offer is some kind of proprietary email solution – an email program that they wrote. This varies by company, so describing an exact feature set is impossible, but contact the company you are looking at to find out more about their email hosting options. Though not as popular as Microsoft Exchange, this may be a good option because the hosting company will ususally provide better support for their custom program and be better able to help you integrate their program with your business.

General Business Email Hosting Features That You May Like

There are a number of features that are common to any custom business email hosting software solution. These features are specifically designed to suit the needs of your business. Here’s a look at common features that you will want.
User Account Management
This is the ability not just to create custom email addresses for each employee, but also to manage, control, and restrict various aspects of their accounts.
Filtering and Monitoring
This will allow you to make sure that your employees aren’t viewing or sending inappropriate material at work, as well as scan email for any other types of content that you wish to monitor or restrict.
Data Security
Business Email Hosting should allow you to keep track of all your employee’s mail, so you can make sure that it’s safe from hackers, as well as back it all up so that you don’t lose important corporate data.

Whatever your business’s needs are, buying business hosting is a great option for an email solution, and provides you with a variety of great options to help you manage large amounts of data and control many user accounts. Contact your hosting company today to find out what kind of options they offer for business email hosting.

By The Email Manager | Posted in Busines Email Hosting | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)