Tag Archives: email

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Send Letters via Email

Sometimes you just need to send a letter. And that’s the basic concept behind Postful. This Web site service is designed to allow you to easily mail a letter just by sending an e-mail. This lets you use e-mail as a single method for connecting with all your contacts, whether they have access to e-mail or not.

There are several ways to use the service. QuickLetter is the easiest. You simply send an e-mail to quickletter@postful.com with a name and mailing address in the subject line. The body of the e-mail contains the information you want to be printed in the letter. You should format the body of the e-mail to look exactly like you want it to look in the letter, including the signature block. Once done, you simply send the e-mail. You will receive a confirmation e-mail from Postful that will allow you to confirm that the address was interpreted correctly and to view a PDF of the actual letter prior to it being printed and mailed. The cost is $.99 for the first page and $.25 for each additional page, which includes postage.

The service is customizable in several ways. You are able to upload a color PDF of your letterhead and store it on the site. E-mail letters can then be printed using your letterhead template in full color. You are also able to create special e-mail addresses for frequent contacts. Rather than typing the mailing address every time, just send your letter content to this e-mail address. You can also create a Groupbox that contains an entire mailing list. Complete information is available at www.postful.com.

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Turn Your Handwriting Into a Font

In this age of e-mail, handwritten notes can make a big impact. Think about it: when was the last time you received a handwritten note? vLetter is a company that will reproduce your own handwriting as a font that you can use on your computer. This allows you to use the speed of typing to create a handwritten look.

The company offers several products. For $150, vLetter Pro will create your own handwriting and signature into a font that allows for completely connected cursive writing. vLetter Print ($70) is a simple printed font that is made from your own handwriting. And vLetter Sig ($30) creates your signature as a font. With your signature as a font, you can sign documents and checks by simply typing your name and choosing the font to display it. This allows you to choose any font size and color for your signature.

The company also offers handwriting fonts as Ready-Made Styles. “Declare” is a font made from the handwriting in the final copy of the Declaration of Independence. This font is a formal calligraphic style that includes an old-fashioned tall “s” character. “GWashing” is a font made from George Washington’s handwriting, taken from archives of his actual correspondence. This less formal style also includes the old-fashioned tall “s” character in combination with a small “s.”

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Learning to Manage Email

Communicating with someone used to be easy. You could simply pick up the phone and give them a call, or sit down and write a note. Fast forward a few years and you now have the Internet making it easy to type an electronic message from your computer or your cell phone. This massive change in how we communicate with others has taken place in a relatively short period of time. Many agents now tell me that e-mail is their primary means of communicating with most clients.

Yet this new communication option has introduced problems into the agency workflow. In fact, I believe that sending and receiving e-mail is currently the biggest drain on productivity for many, if not most, agencies. People are surprised when I make this comment. They contend that e-mail has made it quicker and easier, and takes less time than other forms of communication. I agree with them, but only up to a point.

The problem, as I see it, is that we are allowing e-mail to manage us instead of learning to proactively manage the e-mail that we deal with every day. Like any new form of communication, we need to learn how to use it as an effective tool. Some of the problems I see with e-mail include responding to e-mail as soon as it comes into your Outlook inbox and reading an e-mail but, because we don’t know what to do with it, we leave it in our inbox.

Because paper and fax have been around as communication options for some time we have learned how to manage them well. We can take some of those same principles and apply them to e-mail. Here are some ideas you can use to help everyone start learning to manage e-mail like any other communication.

1) Turn off all notifications for when you receive a new e-mail. There are very few e-mails that are received by staff in an agency that have to be answered immediately. With alerts turned on every time a new e-mail arrives the natural tendency is to switch over to your e-mail client and read the new e-mail. If you’re in the middle of a difficult task your concentration is broken and it will take a few minutes for you to figure out where you were and get started again.

2) Train yourself to review e-mails on a consistent basis. If you’re not being notified when new e-mails arrive, you need to make sure you go to your inbox on a consistent basis to review the new e-mail received. A friend of mine, a CEO of a large corporation, recently decided that he would only answer e-mail twice a day, late in the morning and before he leaves for work at night.

3) David Allen, author of the book “Getting Things Done” (highly recommended), suggests that when you are processing your new e-mails you follow this rule. If you can answer the e-mail, or take other action required in two minutes or less, go ahead and answer the e-mail immediately. If it will take longer than two minutes then move the e-mail to a pending folder to work on later. You then review the pending folder at a predetermined time to complete the work. This allows you to complete easy e-mail and concentrate on more difficult tasks when you have the time.

I have followed this advice to try and better manage the large volume of e-mails I receive. I strongly recommend that you begin experimenting with ways to better manage e-mail communications, both for yourself and your staff. You’ll be less frustrated and your clients will experience better service.

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Checking Email on the Road

(Written by Barry Klein)

In our increasingly connected world, more and more of us spend more and more time checking e-mail on the road (unless, of course, the purpose of your trip is to escape to Fiji so you really can get away from it all). For most of us working stiffs, however, the ability to check e-mail on the road is part of what enables us to take a business or personal trip.

The paradox is that as it becomes harder to check e-mail remotely, it’s also becoming easier.

It’s becoming easier due to the proliferation of hot spots, which are springing up all over the place. Many airlines, like JetBlue, offer free wireless access, as do some airports, such as Tucson International Airport. Many coffee shops (including Starbucks) have it, as do many hotels. Even some McDonalds now offer it. A few cities are also experimenting with free wireless. Many exhibit halls offer free Internet Cafes, often with wireless and network cables for your notebook if you don’t want to use theirs. In short, it seems that you can fire up your notebook and find a wireless network just about anywhere these days.

The hard part is that many of these connections are insecure at best. At worst, they are outright phishing sites. They can capture your information with keylogging software if you’re using their hardware and can literally pull it out of the air if you’re using your own.

Presumably, you know better than to log onto your bank account from a public terminal, but what’s the problem with checking your e-mail from it? Think about it. If someone has access to your e-mail account, they have access to your life. Every time you forget a password, it is e-mailed to you (and, if you’re like me, you save it in a folder). Likewise, every time you register new software, your ID and password (probably the same one you use for everything) — are e-mailed to you. Need I go on?

On the road, you either have your own notebook computer with you or you don’t. These are the two basic scenarios.

Using your own notebook computer

There are two parts to using your own computer. One is the notebook itself, and the other is the connectivity. The absolute best-case option is to provide your own connectivity, and it might be easier (and less expensive) than you think.

If you have Sprint cell phone service, as I do, they offer unlimited DSL-speed Internet connectivity at a very nominal cost. So does Verizon. These services aren’t limited to the browsers built into the phones; you can use them as high-speed modems with your notebook. When I open my notebook, I connect (via Bluetooth) to my cell phone for Internet access, and don’t have to worry about whether the free local service is real or a phishing site.

Don’t have Sprint or Verizon? If you have a PCMCIA slot, Verizon sells a high-speed PCMCIA modem, and a low-cost monthly data service that will get you Internet access anywhere they provide cell service, which is most of the country, even if your cell service is with a competitor.

If these aren’t an option, the next best thing is to go out of your way to make sure that the connection you choose is a safe one. For example, one of the joys of the upcoming HIGH-TECC conference is that attendees sit at big tables using their notebooks as they listen to and participate in the sessions, checking e-mail, and staying in touch. You can’t just log on, however; you need to have the appropriate access code. That’s because it is a secured site, and those are the best.

Next best is to make sure that what you are using is the real service, provided by Marriott, Starbucks, or wherever you are. If there is more than one service showing (I’ve seen as many as three presumably T-Mobile sites at the same location), check with someone who knows which is the real one.

As an aside, as we get more accustomed to wireless connectivity, we tend to disdain the lowly CAT-5 cable connection. However, if you’re using the cable connection in your hotel room, at least you can be reasonably sure you really are connecting to the hotel’s own network, and not someone else’s.

Using a “complimentary access” computer

First and foremost, don’t type personal information into a complimentary access computer. There are alternatives.

One easy one that we often forget is to check your e-mail on your cell phone. More and more phones have browsers built into them. Yes, it isn’t as easy, comfortable, or fast as a computer, but it is far more secure. Plus, if you answer e-mail via your phone, it encourages brevity. BlackBerry users, for example, have elevated the one-sentence email to an art form.

Another alternative while away is to set up a new, separate e-mail account — such as a free one from Yahoo or Gmail — and let your family and office know to use that one. You won’t have access to all of your stored e-mails, but neither will anyone else who happens to capture your keystrokes and goes into that account. If you’re using it just to stay in touch, it’s a simple, easy, and free solution, and you can close the account when you return home.

With a little forethought and planning, you can check e-mail on the road and still stay reasonably secure. Of course, it would still be more fun to be in Fiji without e-mail.

G. Barry Klein is a former insurance agent who maintains the www.ultimateinsurancelinks.com Web site as an industry service. He can be reached at barry@barryklein.com

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Send & Receive Large Files

Being able to attach large files to an e-mail to send to someone else is becoming more difficult as organizations place limits on the size of received e-mails. This problem can arise when trying to send a submission to an underwriter or with a client who needs to send you a picture or large spreadsheet. SendThisFile.com is a Web-based service that streamlines the process of sending and receiving large files.

Using the service is as easy as entering the recipient’s e-mail address into a form, selecting the file you want to send, and clicking the SendThisFile button. The recipient receives a link to their file via an e-mail message and then clicks on the link to download the file to their computer. There are no e-mail attachments and no software to install. There are no file size limits so any file up to 2 gigabytes (a browser limit) can be sent. A free account is available to test the service and for sending a small number of files. For a larger number of files several paid plans are available starting at $30 per year.

Another interesting service is the FileBox, which can be placed on your Web site to allow visitors to easily transfer large files to you at any time. The sender does not have to have a SendThisFile account to use this service. The FileBox is easy to make and easy to install, just fill in a few blanks at the Web site and the automated system writes the HTML code for you. Then you copy and paste the HTML code onto a page on your Web site. We set ours up in just minutes: http://www.steveanderson.com/Send-a-File.html

There are two versions available: The standard, free FileBox and a customizable FileBox for businesses who want to fully integrate it into their Web sites.