April 17th, 2012 
cerullo Email is our prime method of communication these days. It has made communication instantaneous and the transfer of files much easier. The invention of email was a huge step in communication methods. Most people have a love/hate relationship with email these days. It has gotten out of control. Since it is so easy to do, senders often expect you to answer emails instantly, even during non-business hours. Many people don’t know how to leave email alone during non-business hours now with email being on their phone. Unless you don’t have a cell signal you are expected to be checking email. I know I get a few hundred emails a day. It can be frustrating and overwhelming.
On top of the volume of emails we get there are different types of emails which can lead to even more confusion and frustration. There are three main types of email – personal, business, and mass mailing. The lines are blurring between business and personal these days.
Personal Email
Personal email is your Verizon, roadrunner, yahoo, gmail, AOL, etc email accounts. These are free accounts that anyone can sign up for and use for personal use. These are meant for personal use only. They are often used by spammers because anyone can create and account or many accounts on these systems. These systems often are blocked by business email systems because they are so heavily used by spammers. These systems should never be used for business because they are not professional systems and do not brand your company. Yahoo and AOL are known to be hacked constantly. You should change your password every few months to prevent this.
If you want to sign up for newsletters it is a great idea to sign up for one of these accounts and have all your newsletters sent there. This way your real personal account or business account does not get a ton of spam.
Business Email
These accounts are run by systems internal to your business or a third party specializing in email services for businesses. They are usually very locked down and have major spam and antivirus protection on them. You will get a lot less spam through these systems hence why many times personal email accounts do not get through to them. These emails always use your company name and/or your web site address to help brand the company. This also gives the receiver a level of trust that the sender is legitimate.
Business email is meant to handle day to day email correspondence and transfer of reasonably sized files. Many systems have security in place to prevent the sending of emails to a large number of recipients. This prevents the business systems from being hacked or marked as spammers on the Internet. The limit is usually anywhere between 20 and 50 email recipients.
Mass Mailing
Email marketing has really picked up almost to the point its losing its effectiveness because we get so much of it on a daily basis. Email marketing is all those emails you get from organizations and stores trying to sell you something. It has to be done right in order to be effective and not annoying.
There are systems out there that are meant to handle this high volume of email being sent out. These systems are approved on the Internet and registered with all Spam Blocking companies. These systems do not get marked as spammers because they are approved senders of mass emails.
Any company or organization can sign up with these third party companies and use their services to send out mass emails. The major third party companies are Constant Contact, iContact, and Mailchimp. All these companies charge a monthly fee to use their mass emailing services.
If you are going to be sending large quantities of emails you must use one of these services or you will be marked as a spammer and/or your email system won’t even send out the emails.
There are many advantages to using these systems. Your emails can look like your web site does. This helps brand your business/organization. It can be a great marketing piece. These systems all track how many people open your emails and what links they clicked on. This is a great indication how effective your email campaigns are and what you need to change.
Email is a necessary method of communication that is not going away any time soon. It is important to know the differences between the types of email out there. They all have their purpose and need to be used accordingly.
When you are posting a status update you should always make sure you are posting only to your friends. You never want to post to the public. Posting to the public means anyone who is not a friend of yours can see your posts. When you post a status update in the lower right corner you have a list of options.
Unfriending – There will come a point when you go through your friends list and need to clean it up. If you want to remove a person from your friends list you can do it and that person will NOT be notified. To remove a person from being a friend, mouse over their name. Then mouse over the “Friends” box.
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