Welcome to the February edition of ZooNews, brought to you by professional Web site design company Zoonini Web Services.

This month I'd like to offer some simple pointers on how to make your business email messages look more professional – to customers, colleagues, prospects, vendors and business associates.

Most importantly, use an email address with your own domain name, like jane@janesgorgeousflowers.com. Yes, I realize you probably got an email address from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) but why not take advantage of the opportunity to promote your Web site every time you send out a message? Save your ISP address (i.e. me@rogers.com, you@videotron.ca, him@earthlink.net) for personal mail, or don't use it at all – nothing says you have to! Similarly, reserve free email accounts, like those doled out by Hotmail or Yahoo, for personal correspondence only.

When it comes to email messages themselves, create an email footer and make consistent use of it. Set it up as a signature in your email program so that you don't have to retype it in every message. Along with your company name, include a phone number and the URL of your Web site. You could also add a company tagline, or even a call to action like "Visit our site and check out our Spring flower catalogue." Make sure the URL in your signature (or "sig" in email lingo) is clickable by adding http:// in front of it. (See ZooNews #19 for more on clickable links in email messages.) Leave the background patterns and funky colours for personal mail.

If you want to use a graphic in your signature, make sure the file is small – 20 K or under, the more petite the better – and have it properly optimized. If you're not sure how to do this yourself, ask your Web designer for assistance. And unless your graphic incorporates a photograph, you should probably make it a GIF file (Graphic Interchange Format). Too often I see people's logos included in email signatures as a sad, blurry, pixillated JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group – note the word "photographic"!), when a nice, crisp GIF is the much better way to go for most logos.

Email is a tool so many of us use every day in the course of doing business – make the most of it!

One of the benefits of having an email address with your own domain name – besides the fact that it imparts a professional tone – is that most hosting/email packages come with a handy tool called an autoresponder. This is a message that's instantly sent out automatically whenever a message is received at a given email address, and it can be very handy as an out-of-the office message telling correspondents when you'll be back, or as an automated reply (to a customer service address, for example) letting people know that their message has been received, and within what time frame they can expect a response.

Some newsletter/announcement systems also allow you to set up autoresponders in more complex ways, to send out a series of messages at pre-determined intervals. For example, a series of autoresponders could be set up to deliver information in set chunks, let's say as an e-course, or to prompt feedback from customers five, ten, and fifteen days following their purchase.

Got a technology term you'd like demystified in ZooNews? Send it to questions@zoonini.com.

This month, Zoonini launched MichaelBungayStanier.com, a gateway to Michael Bungay Stanier's coaching and motivational products. The site offers quick access to an array of Michael's creations, including his innovative Get Unstuck and Get Going self-coaching tool, provocative Possibility Virus blog, inspiring Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun Flash movie and goodies, recommended books, and lots more.

On Wednesday, February 21, at 10:00 am (yes, that's tomorrow!), Charlotte Riley and I will be speaking to the Montreal chapter of Professional Organizers in Canada on Optimizing Your Web Site: Strategies for Online Success. The talk starts at 10:00 am and takes place at the NDG Loblaws on St-Jacques, corner Cavendish. Cost is $15 for guests, free for POC members – get all the details here. Looking forward to meeting some ZooNews readers there!

À la prochaine,

kp
aka Kathryn Presner