Tag Archive - email

Using Gmail: Send Mail From Another Addresses

February 3, 2011 in Tools with 0 Comments

Gmail

This post is part of the series Using Gmail. Check out all the posts from this series here.

If you’re like most people, you probably have at least two email addresses (personal and work) if not more. It’s not too difficult to manage just two, but once you start adding a few more things can get harder to manage. Thankfully, there is a simple tool that makes your digital communications world simpler: Gmail.

There are way too many facets of Gmail to cover in just one blog post, so I’ll be spreading out these tips over a series of posts. Let’s just focus on one task today: setting up Gmail to send mail from another address.

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Email Errors: Newsletters

June 15, 2010 in Tools with 0 Comments

This is the third post in our series on Email Errors. Be sure to check out our first two on attachments and subject lines.

Newsletters have been a part of ministry for as long as I can remember in various forms. Today, many churches have stopped producing printed newsletters to be mailed via USPS in favor of email newsletters. The benefits are stark. Less expense. Easier to produce. And easier to disseminate greater amounts of information to a larger audience.

With all the benefits of email newsletters there are plenty of ways that newsletters can be mishandled. Today we’ll address seven errors people make with their email newsletters.

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Email Errors: Subject Line

June 15, 2010 in Tools with 1 Comment

This is the second post in our Email Errors series. See our previous post on attachments.

Ok, I’ll admit it. This post is mostly about me and how I treat email. I don’t usually read all my emails word for word. I tend to read the subject line to decide whether or not to open the message, but then only skim through the content of the email. It’s probably not the best way to manage email, but I bet I’m not the only person who goes through email like that.

With that in mind I’d like to point out a few ineffective ways people use the subject line in their emails.

Vague Wording

This can be as simple as only using a word like “Request” or “Question” or “Lunch.” While using subjects like that is ok from time to time and will likely get your recipient to open the email, there’s a better way. For example, instead of saying “Request” or “Question” go ahead ask your question in the subject line. If your question is complicated or fairly wordy at least put some of the details of your question in there, like “Request for help with website” or “Question about next week’s meeting.” Doing this will assist your recipients and help you improve your communication skill.

Too Much Detail

This is the opposite of the above and not nearly as common. You don’t want your subject line to get much longer than about 40-60 characters (about half the size of a tweet). Once that long it’s likely that many people’s email systems will chop off the words at the end. Aim for the core details of your email for your subject and nothing else.

FW: Fwd: RE: Fw: re:

Once an email gets passed around and replied to between different email softwares and accounts it might get tagged with prefixes letting people know if it’s a reply or forward. This is helpful as long as it only happens once or twice. But once there’s a chain of three or more it just looks cluttered. Delete any of these that you don’t really need.

Blank (No Subject)

Leaving off a subject may happen by mistake, impatience, or lack of creativity. Any time you’re communicating with someone else there’s going to be a message that you’re relaying, so you should put something in your subject line every time. If you leave it off for me I probably won’t open it very quickly.

Overselling The Email

Writing the subject in ALL CAPS, adding tons of exclamation marks, or making it high priority don’t really have their intended effects. First off, not all software handles priority the same. Second, the other person you’re sending the email to may not think it’s as important as you do. Third, if your email is really that important you might consider picking up the phone to call or text. Emails can lay unopen for extended periods of time.

These are just a few examples. What are some ways you’ve seen people misuse subject lines? Share in the comments.

Email Errors: Attachments

June 14, 2010 in Tools with 0 Comments

Love it or hate it, email is an integral part of every minister’s life. Whether it’s communicating with co-workers, writing email newsletters, coordinating with volunteers, or the many other ways we use email these days it’s very likely that you’re emailing people multiple times every day.

Sometimes email will help you be more productive and other times it will kill your productivity. This week we’re kicking off a series of posts on errors people make using email and suggest some ways to fix those errors. If you know someone who makes these errors point them this way! Check back each day for more!

Today we’re going to talk about email attachments and some of the common ways I see people using them in less than ideal ways.

Forgetting to Actually Attach the Attachment

I think EVERYONE falls victim to this one from time to time. You tell the recipients of your email to see the attachment, but you didn’t remember to click a couple buttons to add it to your email. It’s embarrassing to be the one to forget the attachment, but you can easily fix this.

If you use Gmail you have a built-in reminder to make sure you don’t forget an attachment (one of the many great reasons to use Gmail!), but it if you use Outlook it’s a little more complicated. Check out this article from LifeHacker on how to set up a macro to help keep you from forgetting to include that attachment.

Trying to Collaborate on an Attachment

Sometimes there’s a document, PowerPoint Presentation, or spreadsheet that you’re working on with a team. There are some areas that need to be edited by one person and other areas that the whole team needs to look at. Not too long ago this was ridiculously hard to pull off. Some people would edit the original, others would edit a new version, and someone was left to try to pull together all the edits into one document. It easily could take hours and hours to pull off.

That’s not the case any more. There are two free solutions that make it really easy to collaboratively edit. If you use Gmail you already have an account with their Google Docs, so just click the Documents link at the top of your Gmail page. If you’re looking for another solution (maybe you or someone you know is anti-Google) you could check out Zoho. They’ve got a nice selection of free tools.

Pictures: Don’t Attach Them Unless You Have To

It’s great that you’ve got 27 pictures from the youth group mission trip that you’d like to have up on the website, but sending those files to your volunteer who runs the site in an email (or 27) is just not the best way to do it. For one, you’re using up a TON of unnecssary storage space and bandwidth. The newest digital cameras on the market take HUGE pictures that might just end up being too big to attach or receive as attachments depending on the mail service being used.

Instead of doing this, open up a free account with flickr (from Yahoo) or Picasa (another Google product). Either service gives you adequate amounts of storage, allow you to share the pictures with others with just a few clicks, and automatically resize the photos for you to make it easier to use in various ways. Either way is SO MUCH better than attaching photos.

Videos: Um, YouTube?

It doesn’t happen too often anymore, but occasionally I’ll get an email with 45 MB (or larger) video attached to it. I can almost always find the same video on YouTube, but I don’t have to wait for it to fully download before  I view it.

Instead of wasting someone else’s email storage and download time you should upload the video to YouTube or Vimeo. They both offer some nice options for sharing or embedding the videos on websites and sharing on facebook/twitter. Don’t attach that video to an email unless you absolutely must.

Closed File Formats (AKA Microsoft Publisher)

It’s great that you’ve spent a ton of time working up a new design for the publication piece, but sending it to me as a Publisher file will do nothing but frustrate me. I don’t have Publisher on my computer and I don’t intend to switch over to Windows just to view it.

Instead of sending that Publisher file (or any other proprietary file for that matter) take an extra 20 seconds to save it as a PDF. This is ridiculously easy to do in Mac (click print then the PDF button on the bottom left of the print dialoge window), but it’s also easy to do in Windows, too. There’s a free app called doPDF that functions as a virtual printer. Once installed you can select doPDF as the printer then save the PDF to wherever you want.

What are some ways that you’ve seen people misuse email attachments? Share your stories in the comments.