Daily Marketing Thoughts

Are you still using a MSN or AOL account?

I still see it all the time. As a business, the business owner promotes her website as ABCCompany.com, and then lists her email as ABC@aol.com

AOL and MSN were made for easy access to the Internet for individual people. I myself had an AOL account for years. But several years ago, they began "protecting" individuals more than a business owner. And that's when I turned off my account.

AOL makes it easy for anyone to list an email as spam. With just a single click, you can instantly label an email as spam - even if you asked for it and are expecting it. Maybe it's been a bad day, and you're tired when you open up your email to 100 messages. So you just start clicking "spam" to get rid of them.

But once a server has been labled as a spammer, AOL will no longer accept email. Which means even if you send an email asking a question, I may never be able to respond. AOL simply will not accept my message.

Now think of that from a business owners perspective. You should NEVER block a prospects email from coming into your business. But if you use AOL, that's exactly what you're doing.

Rumor has it, both AOL and MSN are now blocking out email messages based on the length of the email as well. Which means if you are sending a detailed response to a client, it may get blocked!

What can you do to protect yourself as a business owner? Set up your email account based on your domain name. If your company is ABCCompany.com, use you email as abc@ABCCompany.com Your designer or hoster should easily be able to do this. Not only will it make sure you begin receiving all of your email, you'll look more professional too.

Lori

Labels: business set up, email tips

posted by Lori O @ 1:35 PM