In my previous post, I suggested you have multiple e-mail accounts (GMail) and remove your e-mail address from being displayed your web site.
You can configure GMail easier to read mail from your old account.
This doesn’t work for Yahoo! or Hotmail. They’re web-based and moving from them is messy. In the words of the marketing genius from Nike . "Just do it". As improved as these two e-mail services are, there is still the perception that someone with a Hotmail or Yahoo! e-mail account isn’t very tech savvy.
First, add a signature file to your messages that tells your friends that as of a certain date, you won’t be monitoring e-mail from that account.
You can add a signature file to POP3 or IMAP accounts too, but you have more options available. How do you know if you have a POP3 or IMAP e-mail account? The simple answer is: Can you read messages using a desktop client like Outlook or Thunderbird?
I suggest you also change the Reply To entry to the new address. In Outlook, it looks like this:
When your friends reply to a message, it will be directed to the new e-mail address, not the old address.
Why not just start using the new e-mail address? Messages could get caught by your friend’s spam filter and end up in their junk folder.
I suggest you give your friends two to three weeks notice that you’re moving to a new address, and I’d monitor the old address for a couple of months.
I don’t like Outlook Express, and don’t have it on my system, so I’m not sure where the Reply To configuration section is. Ditch it .. If your Office CD didn’t come with Outlook, use Thunderbird. The main reason to use Outlook is a lot of other applications connect to it. This is especially true of Outlook 2007.
In Thunderbird, it looks like this:
Thunderbird is from Mozilla, the same organization that brought you Firefox. It’s a good basic e-mail client and better than some that have more bells and whistles. They’re do for a new release soon.GMail allows you to read e-mail from another account. This is especially useful as a SPAM filter for your website e-mail accounts.
You can ask your web developer to turn on all the SPAM filters on your website e-mail server. Depending on your hosting company, these services range from very basic (and free) to sophisticated systems (usually an additional charge).
As a solo entrepreneur on a budget, you can use GMail as your spam filter.
Sign onto your GMail account on the web and select the Settings tab, then Accounts. There it is: Add another address. Follow the instructions to add the address:
There is good documentation to help you to use this feature.The reason you use GMail, is to use their SPAM fillter. Right now, there isn’t another free utility that removes SPAM with the same success as GMail.
This scheme allows you to use your business e-mail account, not a GMail address.
What cost-effective things are you doing to remove spam from your e-mail? Will you implement any of the suggestions I’ve made? Why won’t you give up your Yahoo! or Hotmail account?
