Say No To An Email Address For Every Site
Every now and then someone will ask me “How do I manage so many email address for so many different sites?” Building a good email flow sounds terribly complicated. I admit, it did to me too and for a long time I procrastinated on it.
Over the past 12 months, I spent considerable amount of time devising a smooth, workable infrastructure for the company’s customer support email flow. Best thing I ever did. Some parts still need sanding down – that is inevitable. Even the best systems have some rough patches. Overall this has worked out nicely.
Like many Internet Marketers, we have several websites. We started off with each one having its own email address with its own POP3 account. As you can imagine that quickly got out of hand.
So we started re-directing everything into one or two email address but it was still problematic because we’d mess up on the reply emails and overall it was difficult to sort out how much mail came from where. Also, whenever we set up a new site we’d have to create a new email address, remember to forward it and keep track where it was forwarded to. A tangled mess in the back office.
It was time to centralize. We did it in 4 steps. Each step involved a lot of work and sometimes confusion, but they are straight forward steps nonetheless.
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The first thing we did was to set up a help desk system and put it on a domain of its own and used one single email address as the ‘from’ and ‘to’. We tried out several systems but in the end went with Workaholics4Hire because we needed one dedicated customer service agent. They not only provided that person, they provided the help desk system too. One less script for me to
manage. - Then, we went through all our websites’ pages, contact forms, autoresponders etc to change those out to one main address above.
- Then we took inventory of all the different email accounts.
- Finally, all mail from the old addresses were channeled into the help desk. This is supposed to be temporary while customers got transitioned into using the help desk system. It also allows us to catch and update the pages we missed.
Now, when building any new site it is so easy for us. No longer do we have to sit and think of a good email address or keep track of that anymore. Our footers are standardized throughout all sites. If anything needs changed it can be changed once and copied over quickly/easily. Yes – it leaves a footprint but that is not a big worry for us because we want people to know who is behind those sites.
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Wow Lynette, you’ve really got your organizing down to an art so you are ready for anything new that arises from technology.
This advice for email addresses is excellent for the busy online business person.
Wow Lynette, you’ve really got your organizing down to an art so you are ready for anything new that arises from technology.
This advice for email addresses is excellent for the busy online business person.
Just thought of a suggestion for a post that you might do. How to use twitter usefully without getting SO pulled in or on the other hand thinking that you might have missed something important that someone you follow said.
Thanks
Just thought of a suggestion for a post that you might do. How to use twitter usefully without getting SO pulled in or on the other hand thinking that you might have missed something important that someone you follow said.
Thanks
Hi Lynette,
Great to see people not trading time for money. I’m a huge advocate of doing anything to streamline things such as the overflow of email.
Following your blog, Tim Ferris, James Brausch and Woody from WoodyMaxim.com has helped me put my internet business on course to long-term success because of the streamlining.
Creating a held desk system to funnel your emails is a great idea and there is no surprise it works.
Fisk Gawsen
Hi Lynette,
Great to see people not trading time for money. I’m a huge advocate of doing anything to streamline things such as the overflow of email.
Following your blog, Tim Ferris, James Brausch and Woody from WoodyMaxim.com has helped me put my internet business on course to long-term success because of the streamlining.
Creating a held desk system to funnel your emails is a great idea and there is no surprise it works.
Fisk Gawsen
Nice approach with handing over this to a helpdesk.
A question regarding cleanup of mail systems:
is it possible to extract old mails from outlook for just one mail account into a new mail program (e.g. thunderbird)?
Or do you know of anything like a centralized archive program that you can access from seperate email clients?
Nice approach with handing over this to a helpdesk.
A question regarding cleanup of mail systems:
is it possible to extract old mails from outlook for just one mail account into a new mail program (e.g. thunderbird)?
Or do you know of anything like a centralized archive program that you can access from seperate email clients?
@Myrna: Thank you! I try to be but I’m not really the most organized person in the world. Slowly but surely getting there. Good idea on Twitter post!
@Tom: I haven’t done the Outlook to Thunderbird thing in ages. Only did it once oh… 4 years or more ago and never looked back. There’s likely changes now, but I used a conversion tool. I believe I used one of the tools mentioned on this page to convert it.
Keep in mind I was migrating from Outlook Express to Thunderbird not Outlook. It might work for you. Hopefully it does.
As for an email archive program, I’ve used Mailbag Assistant in the past. It is an old program but still very useful. Been around for ages. I loved the ability to archive it off my computer, saving space and the search was awfully useful. They now have another version Aid4Mail that has a few more features , though I’ve never used them.
@Myrna: Thank you! I try to be but I’m not really the most organized person in the world. Slowly but surely getting there. Good idea on Twitter post!
@Tom: I haven’t done the Outlook to Thunderbird thing in ages. Only did it once oh… 4 years or more ago and never looked back. There’s likely changes now, but I used a conversion tool. I believe I used one of the tools mentioned on this page to convert it.
Keep in mind I was migrating from Outlook Express to Thunderbird not Outlook. It might work for you. Hopefully it does.
As for an email archive program, I’ve used Mailbag Assistant in the past. It is an old program but still very useful. Been around for ages. I loved the ability to archive it off my computer, saving space and the search was awfully useful. They now have another version Aid4Mail that has a few more features , though I’ve never used them.
Lynette,
thanks for the links. Will try out the mailbag assistant. Just looks like what i need.
The link to mozillazine was also helpful (btw, the link in your post didn’t work correctly).
Hope to report some good results soon.
T.
Lynette,
thanks for the links. Will try out the mailbag assistant. Just looks like what i need.
The link to mozillazine was also helpful (btw, the link in your post didn’t work correctly).
Hope to report some good results soon.
T.
Ah! Thanks for catching that. Darn, one small space and everything is messed up. Fixed it. Glad I could help.
Ah! Thanks for catching that. Darn, one small space and everything is messed up. Fixed it. Glad I could help.