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ans Serif">1.  Sign Your Emails
With every new email I create, Outlook puts this at the bottom:
______________________________________
Debbie Mayo-Smith
Successful Internet Strategies
www.successis.co.nz
Helping put technology to work for you to:
____________________________________
Ph (09) 575-5359
Mob 025 921 927

ans Serif">Why not have every email you send include your name, company, tag line and telephone number (after all who doesn't have a phone next to their computer)? Here is how to set it up in Outlook 2000 (sorry guys, I'm an MS Office user on PC) In versions prior to 2000, just look in your help

menu to locate the instructions.

1. ans Serif">On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Mail Format tab.
2. ans Serif">In the Send in this message format box, click the message format you want to use the signature with (HTML will give you colour, bolding, font choices).
3. ans Serif">Click Signature Picker, and then click New.
4. ans Serif">In the Enter a name for your new Signature box, enter a name.
5. ans Serif">Under Choose how to create your Signature, select start from scratch or use an existing signature. Click Next.
6. ans Serif">In the Signature text box, type the text you want to include in the signature.
7. ans Serif">You can also paste text to the Signature text box from another document such as Word.
8. ans Serif">To change the paragraph or font format, select the text, click Font or Paragraph, and then select the options you want. These options are not available if you use
   plain text as your message format.

ans Serif">2.  Let Your Personality Shine Through
The internet is not a place to be formal. Or verbose. Or boring. Write like you talk. Use descriptive words and examples to bring your email (or web page) to life. One of my larger corporate clients disagreed with this concept. They said "It goes against our branding to use an informal tone". My reply? If you went to an evening function representing your company dressed in a suit - and every single other person was in casual clothes - are you creating the correct image for yourself or your company?

ans Serif">3.  Why Email To The Lowest Common Denominator?
Almost every single email that I get here in NZ is in boring, uninviting, ugly and hard to read plain text. But why? The stat's on New Zealand and Australian capabilities are:
10% Plain text only
40% rich text (formatted - no graphics)
50% html

ans Serif">So why oh why oh why New Zealand are you plain texting?

ans Serif">(one little note of caution - because of all the viruses last year, many large corporations have firewalls and will accept nothing expect plain messages without attachments).