Email Server Software

So you’ve just finished proofreading your brilliant promotional email — it’s got an irresistible subject line and an offer no one in their right mind could refuse… Now look at it in the preview pane. A whole lot of your readers will!A preview pane allows recipients to view the top two to four inches of your e-mail without actually opening it. Statistics from MarketingSherpa show that 26.6% of consumers read emails that way. And 69% of people reading email at work do so with the preview pane turned on.Nearly half (49%) read only the first few lines in the preview pane to decide if they want to continue reading the message. And an impatient 19% immediately delete messages if insufficient information is displayed.So if you don’t grab people’s attention in the top couple of inches of your email, your message could be lost.Here are five tips you can follow to make sure that you make the most of that critical top two to four inches of every e-mail you send:

People are busy and impatient, and the delete button is right there waiting. So don’t tempt them! Take your message to the top of your email where it will be seen and read.

To your success

Gary Neame

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Well, don’t congratulate yourself just yet…NOW you have to deal with the toughest spam filter of all — your customer!With floods of email arriving every HOUR, most people are ruthless about deleting anything they even suspect won’t interest them. Not only that, they’re almost as likely to report unwanted emails as spam as they are to delete them.

Here are the top three reasons someone will open an email you sent, according to a DoubleClick survey:

Email is one of your most potent sales generators — but only if your emails are getting opened. It’s worth your time to build your credibility by offering lots of value in your regular emails, and study your market to understand their wants and needs.Then, when you send out that promotional email, you know it’s something they’ll open with no hesitation.

To your success,

Gary Neame

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As the economy continues along its unsteady path, many small business owners have been asking me what they can do to keep their businesses financially healthy over the coming months.Lots of people are wondering if they should be investing in fancy new site designs, or boosting their pay-per-click budgets, or hiring high-priced SEO experts to help them get better rankings.Now, while I’m obviously not against spending more money on these sorts of things…… I recommend you start by leveraging the tools you already have, and make sure you’re using them as efficiently and effectively as possible.Take your email marketing, for instance.Ensuring you have a smooth-running and reliable email marketing program is one of the surest ways to keep your business humming, without having to invest a lot of money!I mean, think about it: what’s the BEST way to keep your sales and profits up during a slow economy?Build solid relationships with your existing customers, so they keep coming back for more.And what’s the ideal way to build those relationships?Yep, you guessed it…When you stay in touch with your regular customers — and email them valuable information — they’ll quickly view you as a credible resource, an expert in your field, and most important, someone who’s watching out for their best interests. And they’ll reward you with their loyalty (and continued purchases)!Unfortunately, many business owners take their email marketing for granted, and pay little attention to it beyond what their next promotion will be…… and meanwhile, the number of emails that actually make it to their customers’ inboxes gets lower each week! That’s because legitimate permission-based email can often be mistakenly identified as “spam,” and sent straight to customers’ spam, folders… if it gets delivered at all.It kind of defeats the purpose of using email for customer retention if none of your customers are getting the emails, right?Fortunately, it’s EASY to enjoy a high rate of deliverability with your email, if you understand a few basic spam rules. So to make sure as much of your email is getting to your customers as possible, here are the TOP TEN things you MUST do to avoid having your email mistakenly labeled as spam…Rule #1: Keep ACCURATE records of EACH person who subscribesHaving detailed records is just good business practice, but in the case of your opt-ins, it’s critical.So make sure you keep track of the date, time, referring IP address, and referring web page for EACH person who signs up, along with their first name, last name, and email address.You can quickly and easily prove that you’re definitely NOT a spammer if you have details to back yourself up. Rule #2: Track requests to opt out, and remove these people PRONTO!Once again, good record-keeping is the way to go. The CAN-SPAM act requires that you remove people who ask to opt out within 10 days of their request.But why not play it safe? It’s a good idea to implement your remove requests every couple of days, as well as before you do a new mailing. Rule #3: Post your privacy policy on your website Make sure you let people know that you will NEVER sell or trade their names and email addresses when they opt-in, and make sure you STICK to that!There’s a second benefit to posting your privacy policy clearly: you’ll actually get MORE opt ins, because people will feel more comfortable sharing their information with you.A clearly spelled-out privacy policy somewhere in your site, along with a direct link to it from your opt-in form, will go a long way in building credibility with your customers. If you’re unsure of how to write a privacy policy, I recommend you visit this site, where you can have one generated for you, automatically.Rule #4: Make sure you’re using reputable service providers If you’re thinking of hiring a third party to manage your email for you, or rent email lists from, make sure you investigate them thoroughly before you sign on the dotted line.When it comes to the Internet, your reputation is only as good as the people who manage your email promotions for you, and you DON’T want to be hurt by someone else’s bad behavior.Rule #5: Use rental lists with care Thinking of renting an email list for a promotion? Make sure you take the time to review the form that was used to collect those names and email addresses.Not only will you be able to tell if the people on the list have given their permission to the list broker to sell or rent their information, you should also be able to tell if the people on the list will be interested in your offer. Rule #6: Use a REAL return email address with room to store bounce-backs and opt-outs While every email you send should have an “unsubscribe” link it in (more about that in a minute), you also need to honor any unsubscribe requests that people send to your regular email address. So make sure it’s possible for people on your list to reach you through regular email, and also make sure you’ve got room in your inbox to receive the messages. There’s nothing worse than an unsubscribe request that can’t be delivered!And while it may be tempting to respond to the occasional angry unsubscribe email you may get from a disgruntled subscriber, your best course of action is simply to delete them promptly.Rule #7: Provide easy instructions for how to unsubscribeEVERY email you send out MUST contain clear, simple instructions that tell people how to unsubscribe if they no longer wish to receive email from you… as well as a link they can click to unsubscribe automatically.This is NOT negotiable. Any email sent out without unsubscribe information is officially spam!Rule #8: Provide your valid physical address Each email you send out must contain your physical address. Consider creating an email template with your contact information in the footer, and then use this template for each email you write. You’ll eliminate the possibility of accidentally sending out mail without this important detail. Rule #9: Use a consistent “from” address The “from” line in your email must be valid and accurate — the name of your business, for instance, or your own name (provided your name is well enough linked to your business that your customers will recognize it).Your email address should also be clear enough for your customers to recognize. Some web-based email doesn’t show the “from” line, so there needs to be another way for your customers to recognize you.Rule #10: Use an authentic, non-misleading subject lineNobody likes to be fooled or tricked, and deception is the WRONG way to earn your customers’ trust and respect, so make sure your subject line is related to your actual messages. So if your subject line says Janet, three ways to save money, you need to make sure you actually are talking about that in your email, and preferably within the first few paragraphs. Otherwise, your visitors will feel cheated, and that will hurt your credibility. Email marketing is inexpensive, easily trackable, and extremely effective. And the reason it’s so effective is that you send it to a highly targeted, selected group of people; your customers and subscribers who have a relationship with you and WANT to hear from you.But even your legitimate mail can be snagged in the web of anti-spam measures… If you follow these 10 simple rules, you’ll have the best chance of getting your email delivered. Keep your opt-in list clean, and your email promotions should be recognized for what they are… responsible opt-in email promotions, not spam.And that’s the BEST way to continue to earn profits during the current economic downturn, without having to invest one additional penny! To your success,

Gary Neame

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Email marketing system is all you are supposed to understand before you can be a good internet marketer.  Many questions can arise in your mind which can leave you perplexed and still.  These can be as:  Way to get the emails for marketing; process of contacting them; and to keep them concerned with it.  Find all the answers to your questions here.  If you have to traffic your business website then the main aim often concerns with the email marketing.  Sent mails should have the ability and intensity to force the user’s mind to click on the link to your webpage.  The website you own should have the facility for the new users to sign up for the business trends like alert mails, newsletters and the latest notifications on the business working.  You can grab the attention of the new user or visitor of your web page by investing some amount of yours in availing them a discount on the products or reward like a T-shirt.  This is surely the best tip for starting with the email marketing system.  It’s a great interest for the customers that you are giving them something that is free or at a very cheap price, and you can observe a heavy mailing list which will in turn hike your sales.  Its obvious that if any has visited your webpage, they will be rarely visiting your website again.  To make their visits to your website frequent, you need to persuade them for the subscription to mails and newsletters.  Now starts the use of bulk email software which supports your email marketing system.  There should not be any sort of trash in the emails but only the informative and useful part.  Emails which are good for nothing can make your users flee from your business, so better keep up the uniqueness of the emails.  So better try to avoid these sort of mistakes which can lead many of your users to unsubscribe from your mailing list, causing an effective loss.  Sent emails can be personalized like putting their birthday details or joining date to subscription along and providing a discount or a ‘sale for you’.  This is a great way to make your subscribers return your website.  Now this is the time for your email marketing system to explore a new world and widen your business sphere by trying to incentivise new users to subscribe to your mails.  You would never mind the cost of email marketing if and only if done correctly.  There is another way to start with if you are a new internet user and don’t know about the internet marketing.  That is you better register your self at any email marketing system which will guide and support you throughout the process.

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What is email marketing?Basically, in plain English, email marketing is a targeted mass mailing done via email. The purpose of email marketing could be advertising in order to recruit new clients, introducing a new set of products or services to an existing client base, keeping your clients informed by means of a newsletter, etc. All of the before mentioned activities are very legitimate business efforts, as long as you respect some unwritten rules and as long as the list of emails you use is what is called ‘targeted’, in other words the names came from a database generated by your marketing division and represents your existing client base, a carefully selected list of potential prospects or a list of people who opted in to receive your messages.If instead of the above you use a list that you bought (you know, “25 million guaranteed AOL email addresses for only 19.95 – plus shipping”), or are doing it without warning the people on your list, or using other shady methods, then you are considered a spammer and what you are sending is spam, bulk mail, unsolicited email, basically, the main enemy of all things virtue and life in general. Yes folks, it is that easy to be labeled as a spammer, and very hard to get out of it.Once your message is considered unsolicited, you will immediately be put on zillions of black lists, side by side with those who promise inches and inches of extra extremities and hours and hours of ecstatic pleasures (for only 3 easy payments and some handling fees).Sound pretty risky, so why bother?Obviously, opt-in email advertising is far more cost effective than direct marketing via regular mail, door-to-door sales, or telemarketing. Paper, printing, envelopes, and postage can add up quickly. Door to door sales require paying out commissions. Telemarketing results in high long distance bills, often without great results, as people become more and more blood thirsty toward the people on the other end of the so called cold call.So why not just use my personal email or my company’s mail server and some mailing software?In the early days of email marketing. They would gather all their emails into some primitive version of a spreadsheet, fire up some mail merging program, hook it up to their corporate mail system and voila, thousands of emails were flying away.Today, the scenario is certainly possible, but let me tell you in a simple set of scenarios what can happen:One of the many not-for-profit groups that decided to police the internet will intercept that a large number of emails were generated and sent by a server near you (yep, they can do that). In order to protect the civilized world from those who spread spam, viruses and other vermin, they will put you on a list of threats to humanity. Those other nice corporate folks who were your indented recipients, have an IT department that gets constantly yelled at by angry users who get emails with naked people. Well – Mel, their IT guy decides to put up an anti-spam system that links to that not-for-profit’s database of known spammers (oh yeah, did I mention you are now a ‘known spammer’?) and block your emails. Your emails might actually be blocked so well that your company will have a real trouble communicating via email and your IT folks will all go nuts and/or get fired.Basically, not so good. Other things that can happen are: you’ll have to build some opt-in / opt-out system, in some states there are laws that require that you make it very easy for your audience to unsubscribe, you’ll have a hard time formatting your emails in a decent, eye pleasing way, etc.Lastly, the process of sending thousands of emails and managing lists, subscribing and unsubscribing people is tedious and just plain annoying. The only way to do it is with a maximum degree of automation, or, the better solution – to outsource to a company that does it professionally.Folks, I am known for promoting the “do it in house” concept, and am not that big on outsourcing. But when it comes to mass mailing… I say stay away from it and let the professionals do what they do.If you are worried about cost, know that the fee you pay for email marketing services, will still cost less than the continued overhead and expenses of the traditional options, not to mention the great possibilities of reaching a much larger audience, much faster (practically instantly).What to look for in an email marketing company?1. Automating Your Subscribe and Unsubscribe RequestsMany email marketing companies will provide you with exact HTML code you need to paste to your site to have a subscription form on your web site. The better services also provide a link at the bottom of each email that enables subscribers to update their information or unsubscribe from a list, automating everything for you.2. Personalization of EmailsAnother powerful feature of many email marketing services is the ability to use mail merge capabilities to personalize each email that you send. The better services allow to have custom fields, additional to the standard first name and last name.3. Bounceback email handlingBouncebacks are emails that are sent to email accounts that no longer exist or are full, blocked, etc. Essentially, you’ll get a response stating that your message did not make it. All email list management software programs are able to manage subscribe and unsubscribe requests and send out messages, however without integrated bounceback email handling all the non-deliverable emails will be sent back to you, a rather big nuisance if your list is large. Ideally, the email software you use will be able to manage your bouncebacks for you. Whenever a bounceback is received, the software makes a note of the address and if another bounceback is received the email address will be sent to a list of dead addresses.This remove capability is extremely important since if you continuously send out emails with many bouncebacks you may be blacklisted as a spammer. This is something you really want to avoid at all cost.4. HTML emailThe ability to send out HTML emails has been around for quite some time. Most email marketing companies support the ability to send out messages that include graphics and formatted text. This is surely something you’ll want to look for.However, not all of your users have the ability to view email messages in HTML format. This percentage is usually between 10-20%. Instead of seeing your aesthetically pleasing email they might see a string of meaningless code. Using most email list management programs, these 10-20% of users will open up emails from you and be very inclined to call you a spammer.To avoid this, look for companies that use multi-part MIME to send out messages. When you send an HTML email in multi-part MIME, users who do not have the ability to view HTML messages will receive the email in the usual text format.

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Before launching an email marketing campaign, it is important that you realize that email marketing is of two types. One type of email marketing consists of sending spam mails. Spam mails are unsolicited mails; emails that have been sent to people without their permission. The other type of email marketing consists of sending emails to people who have subscribed to your emails or newsletters. This means emails are being sent only to those specific people who have given their permission to receive your mails.Avoid sending spam mailIt is easy to see that the first type of email marketing should be avoided at all costs. Sending spam is the quickest way to ruin your reputation. That being the case, you can see why getting permission for carrying out bulk email marketing is so vitally important. Today, bulk email marketing is considered to be of the most successful and cost effective methods of marketing your company’s products and services. Different free permission based softwareFor this reason, a number of email marketing software has been created especially to help you send bulk mail in the right way – with the permission of those that are being sent your emails. Such software is available in many different types and a lot of them are absolutely free of cost. You can use such free software without spending any money at all. The free software versions may not contain the full gamut of features that are available in the paid for software versions. However, if your email campaign is small sized, the free versions would have sufficient features to satisfy your requirements. Variety of basic featuresBulk email software comes with a variety of basic features. Such software has tracking systems and is capable of managing your contact list. Permission based software lets you create newsletters with minimum stress. It also allows you to look after your subscribes and unsubscribes and even manages your bounces. Using such software also makes it possible to analyze important statistics such as your open rate as well as your click through rate. Helps decide on communication type and frequencyUsing bulk email marketing software also makes it possible for you to make a decision regarding the kind of email communication that you plan to send as well as the frequency of the communication. The software makes it possible for your emails to be sent out automatically at the date and time chosen by you. This is a very important feature as it results in your subscribers receiving the number of emails that they have given you permission to send, at consistent intervals.Effective templatesEmail software is also able to provide you with effective email templates. Most software has a full fledged range of template designs that you can choose from.  Such software provides a vast number of design templates at absolutely no cost and is also able to design custom templates at a very minimal cost. Now that you are aware of the importance of carrying out an email campaign the right way, make sure that you follow the rules and do not get accused of sending spam. Take advantage of the software available and get permission for your bulk email marketing!

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Email administration is a technical specialty, like server administration or network management. Knowing one area is no guarantee of talent in another area. You need to find a web hosting company with a reputation for not having chronic email difficulties and that quickly resolves problems as they occur.

When creating a website, one of the important considerations is providing a way for your visitors to get in touch with you. Email access is the most common way of doing so and is one of the most frequently seen add- ons to websites. Email can be used as a way of signing up visitors for your newsletter, give visitors an avenue of communication, for technical issues and a hundred other applications.

lot of progress has been made in the last decade on knocking down the frequency and severity of email based virus attacks. Of course, many viruses have historically been and are spread by email attachments. That’s why everyone tells you never to open an unknown attachment. In fact, security experts say to never open attachments which are unexpected period, even opening attachments from a person you know may be done with precaution because some viruses may be forwarded inadvertently by well meaning friends.

Today though, spam is the email public enemy number one. It has been estimated that as much of 97% of email sent is spam! While people may quibble about what is and isn’t spam, it can be loosely defined as unwanted commercial email sent by someone to a recipient who has not requested email from.

Spam clogs inboxes, making people sort through tons of junk to find their real messages and is very often offensive in nature. Unfortunately, spam isn’t going anywhere soon. Even though many laws have been put in place governing spam, countless spammers continue to risk legal penalties to make money from the very small number of people who open their email and respond not knowing what they are getting into.

Other email problems are even worse for website owners. Some web hosts will shut down a site if they receive complains of spam from relevant authorities. This can sometimes be dealt with by sending a message to an admin who can take your site off of the blacklist if you proof this to be an error or not authorized by the site owner.

For millions of webmasters and site users today, email is the method of choice for communications. When there are errors in the system, someone has to step up and put things right. This means, usually, relying on someone who has skills on how to manage email software’s.

So other than to make a few gripes in print, what’s the point of this article anyway? All of these problems are meant to illustrate how important this aspect of server management is – and why it’s important to consider when you are looking for a new web hosting company, or are considering a switch. Just like network and server administration, web hosting companies have varying capabilities for dealing with email problems. Some are very competent and responsive. Others are not, or are even worse – indifferent to the problem. Most are somewhere in between these two extremes.

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The problem with electronic mail todayEmail is not what it was supposed to be. Its inventors have not foreseen the dan¬gers associated with this new form of communication. Means of protection were added later on, but do little to protect people’s mailboxes. As a result, most of the mail traffic these days is unwanted: spam, malware, phishing. How can we use the AXIGEN Mail Server and existing free anti-spam, antivirus and anti-phishing software and technologies so that the result is more than the sum of the parts?Traditional filtering in AXIGENFrom its very beginnings, AXIGEN has integrated open-source filters such as SpamAssassin and ClamAV and has used the fastest way to process mails through them by interfacing with their daemons directly. But this usage scenario had a major downside: mail messages were scanned in the queue, after having been accepted by the mail server. As a result, “Spam” folders had the tendency to grow indefinitely and waste space in the server storage and backup mediums.A new approach to email filteringStarting with version 6.2.2, AXIGEN can integrate with a Milter filter at the SMTP level, enabling scanning of the incoming SMTP connections. The possibility to scan a message before receiving it opens up new perspectives, as it enables us to refuse a message if the content filters strongly indicate that the scanned message is unwanted.Let’s take a simple example, in which the decision to reject a mail was taken by the Milter filter by evaluating the results of the antivirus scanner. Why would this be a better choice than quarantining, for example, or tagging?For one thing, we do not accept the message and no further resources are allocated to this mail: processing, storage, backup, double-checks etc. For unwanted traffic, this is a very good thing as it minimizes your problems. However, what happens if, unfortunately, the refused message is a legitimate mail? Let’s compare the three valid choices: quarantining, tagging or refusing the message.

To learn more about our innovative, Milter-based filtering, please continue to read this whitepaper by clicking here: Innovative Mail Filtering, or contact us at: sales@axigen.com. We also invite you to sign up to our free, live webinar organized in partnership with the The Radicati Group:

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In years past, many businesses might have claimed that sending out good ol’ paper flyers to their customers was a highly effective form of marketing. Just about every consumer can recall seeing their mailbox jammed with flyers or having a flyer stuck onto their car window. Some people might have read these flyers while others quickly tossed them aside. But from the business’ (and marketers) point of view, enough people read (and often acted upon them) to make it an efficient and effective platform for spreading their promotional content.
The traditional paper flyer’s time in the spotlight as a viable and effective marketing platform has, for all intensive purposes, come to an end. Paper flyers have been replaced by a new, environmentally friendly and far more effective platform.
The majority of businesses have made the switch to email flyers. Here are just some of the reasons why.
Many organizations have come to realize that, with email flyers, there is no need to hire an pricey designer and no need to incur expensive printing fees. Since most email flyer programs let the actual business owner, manager, or marketing team easily point-and-click their way to a professional eye-catching email flyer, the costs are dramatically lower. This also heavily decreases the amount of lead time required to launch an email flyer campaign.
In the past, the marketer would have needed to factor in all the design, printing and distribution time. Now with email flyers, that is all cut down to a matter of seconds. Just about every business operator will tell you that time is amongst the scarcest resources they have, so the fact that email flyers mitigate that big time sink of traditional paper flyers is a huge benefit.
Email flyers also help extend the businesses promotional messages, due to the viral nature of email.
Most email flyer programs will have a ‘forward to friend’ feature that further promotes the spreading of the email. With traditional paper flyers, there is practically no forwarding of the message at all. In all hoensty, how many people do you think get a flyer stuffed in their mailbox and think “You know what, I’m going to photocopy this and pass it out to my friends at work!” I can guarantee you not many! But, with the power of email fueling your message, anyone who receives your email flyer can easily use the special ‘forward to friend’ option embedded in the content, or they can simply click the forward button on their email software. In either case, more people are seeing your message.
In addition, since your email flyer is being passed along to someone’s friend or associate, it instantly gains even more credibility, which can go a long way towards making your message stick.
While traditional paper flyers leave the marketer flying blind in terms of overall results, email flyers completely alleviate this shortcoming and put tons of information at your fingertips. When you send out an email flyer, you can track many different aspects of its progress and success. You can see the exact percentage of people who have opened your email flyer, and even drill down to know exactly which contacts opened the email (and even the exact time they opened it and if they opened it more than once!).
With email flyers you can also track exactly who is clicking on links included in your content, and also who is forwarding your message to their friends. With this information easily accessible, marketers can make important decisions on how to improve their promotional campaigns. They’ll know exactly what adjustments to make to so their email flyers can be even more effective. Compare this with the “send out paper flyers, cross your fingers and hope for the best” approach, and it’s clear just why so many businesses are now harnessing the power of email flyers and email marketing.
While the advantages of email flyers over traditional paper flyers go on and on, one issue worth mentioning is that email flyers are a lot more environmentally friendly. With an overall push by the global community to treat our environment better, it’s clear that sending out digital email flyers that produce no waste is far better for the environment than printing thousands and thousands of paper flyers. Even if we all hope that those paper flyers will be recycled, we know that ultimately not all of them will end up in a blue box. That means they have to end up somewhere and that may be the trash or it may be litter on our streets. No matter where it ends up, it’s obvious that Mother Nature wouldn’t be too pleased.
With email flyers, there is no waste, no garbage, and no litter. Many larger organizations, particularly in the USA, have switched to email flyers to be more environmentally conscious.
There is no doubt that email flyers are the evolution of paper flyers and have a lot of added benefits and advantates. Email flyers consistently prove more advantageous to businesses and ultimately preduce a greater ROI. With more businesses using onto email flyers, we can all expect to see less paper flyers landing in our mailbox and more email flyers landing in our inbox.

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