Managing Your Email

One of the greatest challenges of any webmaster is dealing with a flood of e-mail, from visitors, from customers and not to mention the dozens of newsletters and e-zines you no doubt subscribe to. This article will outline some strategies for managing all that e-mail, and spam.

There are several popular e-mail programs out there that are used widely, among those Eudora Pro 4 and Pegasus Mail. My personal favourite is Eudora Pro 4 which I've been using for over a year now. Its ability to manage multiple e-mail accounts, and powerful filters make it perfect for people like me who receive and send lots of e-mail everyday.

Dealing with the Flood

It is very important for you to manage your e-mail properly so that you can efficiently read and reply your e-mail without getting lost in the flood. Below I've outlined several strategies that you can use.

- If you have a popular web site setup a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) to answer some of the most common e-mail inquiries you receive. In Eudora Pro 4 you can setup "stationeries" which you can use to reply to frequently asked questions instead of typing out the same response over and over again.

- If you really want to automate things setup filters that scan for keywords
in incoming messages and automatically reply with one of the stationeries.
The only problem with this method is that Eudora is not a human being,
and cannot judge what the e-mail message is about, it can only scan for
keywords and hence it can make mistakes.

- You can setup Eudora to automatically login and download all your e-mail
before you even get to your computer. This can be a big time saver as the
your emails are already waiting for you, and you don't have to login and wait
while they download.

- If you subscribe to several newsletters create a folder called "newsletters" and use filters to automatically put all the newsletters that you subscribe to into that folder for reading at your leisure.

- Use priorities and labels in Eudora Pro (it may be called something else in your e-mail program) to flag important e-mail that you wish to answer later and not forget. You could also setup a folder for mail that you want to answer later on.

- Make sure you have a folder called "Permanent" or something similar where you transfer all your login names and passwords from the confirmation e-mails that you receive, and the welcome messages from newsletters that you subscribe to. These e-mails will become invaluable in the future.

- If you have your own domain name and your webhosting company allows e-mail aliases use them! Use several different e-mail aliases around your site for various inquiries such as suggestions, advertising inquiries etc. and then setup filters in your e-mail program to either filter or flag messages that come into your mailbox depending on which e-mail alias the email was addressed to.