Thursday, December 13, 2007 Ng: Own domain By Wilson Ng Wired Desktop
I ONCE suggested in this column that a company should get its own domain for e-mail (like yourname@yourcompany. com) instead of giving a calling card with an e-mail in hotmail.com or yahoo. com (unless it is your personal e-mail). My suggestion received a lot of reaction (and caused awareness obviously).
By having your own domain, you are creating the impression that your company is a serious business. It should not be using free e-mail providers!
Here are other tips you may consider in your use of ICT technology:
1. Do not put your e-mail address on your website. This is for the simple reason that many spammers use automatic scanners to browse through websites, and just pick up anything that has a “@” in it, and put it in their mailing list. So if you put an e-mail address like sup-port@yourcompany.com in the web, it is guaranteed that this will soon get a lot of junk mail.
2. Do not use your company e-mail to register on websites. It might be good to have a personal e-mail that you can use to participate in e-groups or register in websites rather than the company e-mail address. It is better to limit your company e-mail to your official business. Remember, the company owns the e-mail system, and as such, has the right (this has been the subject of a lot of legal contests) to read your mails. Besides, you really don’t want the trouble of having your personals exposed there.
If you want to hear from people who visit your website, it is easy to create a form which they will fill up and submit with a click. The form goes to your company inbox without advertising your e-mail address! If you have a very active personal e-mail address that your friends use, then consider getting a third e-mail just to register on websites.
3. Do not use your official e-mail address to send mailing lists, company promos or newsletters, or even chain mail. Always remember that people are now very spam-resistant, and do not hesitate to mark undesirable e-mail as spam. They may attend your company events or register on your website that they would be happy to receive updates from you, but if the mail does not provide them valuable information, they may soon mark your messages as spam.
If you always forward jokes and chain mail (like those that say, “send this to 20 of your friends and you will have good fortune”), and you thought these are welcomed, think again.
If many of your people in your company are doing this, pretty soon, many of your e-mails will be marked as spam by many people. And when spam listing organizations observe this development, you will have a problem because then, even legitimate mails of your company will not get through.
Use another e-mail provider or your personal e-mail to send jokes to friends, if you must.
4. If your business has more than five employees, consider getting a trunk line and a PBX system.
Over 12 years ago, I went to a conference in the United States, where I gave my card to somebody. The person who received my card asked how come my company has three telephone numbers. I could not give an answer.
Contrary to popular notion, having more than one telephone number gives the impression that your company is small. If you have three telephone numbers, it is a hassle to ask people to call another number if the other is busy. If you want people to reach you, you let them remember only one number, which is always available. With a trunk line, the system automatically routes calls to whoever is available. It is more professional and easier for the caller.
What you really want is to institute a system in which callers do not get a busy tone and can reach the person they wish to speak to.
