by

Robin Heppell

Are You Happy with Your Email System?

On Friday, one of the funeral home website provider’s servers went down and clients were stuck without their website being live, but more importantly their email had stopped – and going into the weekend without email was not a great way to end your Friday.  Anyway, we were able to get both clients set up using Google Applications where you can use your domain name email accounts like “info@yourfuneralchapel.com” and operate them through the power of GMail.

Here is a short video on why I like and recommend Gmail over any other email solution.

 

Sign up for your Free Gmail Account

Sign up for your Google Apps (Standard)

(as usual, make sure that you are comfortable with the Terms of Service – I use both of these services)

If you need help to set up all of the Google Applications for your domains, please send me an email at robin@funeralfuturist.com – you’ll be surprised how reasonable it is to get set up and get running in just a few hours.

Questions about GMail, Google Apps, or email? Please leave them below.

…Hepp

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4 responses to “Are You Happy with Your Email System?”

  1. Dale Clock

    Hey Rob,

    This comes at a good time. We are using several accounts now and the staff uses various ways to read their email. Life Story networks hosts our @lifestorynet.com accounts, and store stuff on their server. They are looking at switching things in the near future and allowing all of us to get more customized names. But I also have our own email system through my web site, through 1and1, that has our @clockfuneralhome.com addresses. Those accounts are all forwarded to the @lifestorynet.com accounts so combines stuff in one place. We also use Google for our calendar and have several schedules and lists on google docs. It looks like what you are recommending is push everything through google. So will Gmail pull everything from the accounts at the various other places (yahoo, clockfuneralhome, lifestorynet……) or do I have to go to the other mail programs and push (send) all the emails to the Gmail accounts? And will all of this work with Outlook or will I need to switch over to Gmail for all my contact management

    Dale

  2. Robin Heppell

    Dale, thanks for the comment. Google Apps lets you create up to 50 user accounts, plus numerour “aliases” – they call them “nicknames”. The other cool thing is that you can add multiple domains to that account. So I have FuneralFuturist.com, but have added HeppellMedia.com so automatically any emails sent to robin@heppellmedia.com forward to robin@funeralfuturist.com.
    You can also set up “Rule” – they call them “Filters” that can automatically forward emails – this is a standard practice that we do when setting them up for a client as what if the director is on a service or off for the day, but the obit needs to get into the paper – all of the director’s emails are copied to the main info@ account.
    Yes, totally works with Outlook, Blackberrys, iPhone but once use to the GMail interface, you probably won’t go back to Outlook.
    …Hepp

  3. David Kesner

    After reading the Q&A from Dale Clock, does Gmail offer the other components of Outlook, i.e. managing contacts, and a to-do list? Thanks

  4. Robin Heppell

    David…

    Thanks for the comment. I will have to admit that Gmail’s Contacts Management is not at the same level as Outlook, although it is always getting better (but not there yet). Just to let you know, you can run your Gmail email account or your Google Apps Email accounts through the Outlook program so you will still have the same functionality with Outlook, but the power of Gmail / Google Apps.

    As for Tasks / To Do Lists – yes, it is incorporated in Gmail’s Calendar feature which would be part of your Gmail / Google Apps account.

    I hope that answers your questions.

    …Hepp

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