Setting up Outlook or Outlook Express mail clients
Many small business web site owners connect to the Internet via an account from a local Internet Service Provider (ISP), whether that be at home or in the office. These accounts, whether dial-up or high speed broadband, usually are the main email account for the business. Some have gone as far as to maximize the use of additional email accounts provided by the ISP, but one drawback is that these accounts are all tied to the ISP's domain name and not the domain name of the business. No matter how you slice it, your email address is still somebody-else's.dot.com.
When small business web sites are set up, there are numerous options available for email accounts tied to the web site and the site's domain name. Some may include browser-based web mail, others may include what is referred to as a "catch-all" account, while still others may have simply forwarded the web site's email to the site owner's email account at his ISP.
How can you tie all this together into an easy-to-manage package? This article will show you how to consolidate your email into one email client, utilize your company's domain name in your default email address, and still leave web mail available to you should you want to access your web site email while away from your computer.
Email basics
Most email accounts are accessed via POP (Post Office Protocol) servers, and are the main source of incoming email. These accounts are authenticated with a password. Most POP accounts can be accessed via the Internet simply by supplying the POP server name that the email account resides on, the user's email account name, and the associated password. Outgoing email is routed through SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) servers and is also authenticated with a username and password.
While most POP mail servers can be accessed from any network connection, most ISP's will not allow connections to their SMTP server unless you are logged onto their network connection. This is the only way they can validate who it is sending mail through their servers, and is their way to fight spam. Likewise most large ISPs block port 25 so that you can't send email to another SMTP server while connected to their network, although there are ways around this.
That said, the simplest email configuration is for you to set up your email client to add another email account to download email from your web site's POP mail server and route replies back out through your ISP's SMTP server. This way, you can download email from your web site, store it in a consolidated email inbox, and reply at your leisure all while presenting the professional appearance of your replies coming from
instead of appearing as coming from
Setting up your email client
This article shows you how to set this up using Microsoft Outlook, although the same procedures will work for Outlook Express and most major email clients. This particular version is Outlook 2003. If you are using Outlook to handle your incoming email from your ISP, you already have a setup working which will make it easy to simply add another email account. If you aren't, it's just a simple matter using details similar to what is shown you here. For this example, it is assumed you already have your email client working to handle your ISP's email and will be making an additional email account entry.
From inside Outlook, begin by clicking on "Tools" in the menu and then selecting "E-mail Accounts."
This will open the Email Accounts wizard. From this menu select "Add a new e-mail account" and click "Next."
The Email Accounts wizard will prompt you to select a server type to work with. Most use POP, although you may have an IMAP server. For this example, we are assuming a POP server, so select "POP" and click "Next.".
The Email Accounts wizard will then prompt you to enter the POP settings for your web site's email account. On this screen, you should enter your name exactly as you would like for it to appear in the "From" line of your email. Beneath that, you should enter the email address that you want viewers to see as the return address to reach you. This should be the email address from your web site's domain.
Next you will enter your web site's incoming POP mail server name. You should enter it as "www.yourwebsite.com." Below that, you will enter the server name of your ISP's outgoing SMTP mail server. You should have received this information from your ISP when you signed up for Internet access.
In the "Logon Information" boxes, you will need to enter the username and password for your web site's incoming POP mail server. Select "Remember password" and you won't have to enter it each time it connects.
Now, we are almost finished with the setup, as we have told the setup wizard 1) How you want your name and email address to appear, 2) What server your web site's email is coming from, 3) What server your ISP allows you to send mail out through, and 4) what your logon information is for your web site's incoming mail server. All we need to do now is designate a name to identify this email account and enter the logon information for your ISP's outgoing mail server. This is done by clicking on the "More Settings" button.
In the dialog box that pops up, on the "General" tab, enter in a name to identify this email account so you will know which one to use when creating a new email message. Optionally, enter text in the "Organization" field if you want to designate your company name to appear, such as in USEnet posts.
Click the "Outgoing Server" tab. Select "My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication" and then select "Log on using" and enter the username and password you use to connect to your ISP's email server. Also select "Remember password."
The next step is optional, but one you may like. Click the tab "Advanced" and look under the "Delivery" section. There is an option to leave a copy of your email on the web site's email server, and an option to set how many days worth of email to leave there. This will allow you to check your email on your computer, but because there is still a copy on your web server, you can also access a copy of the mail via web mail for up to X number of days.
This is helpful if you travel and need to access your email but don't travel with your computer. It lets you access your email while traveling and your will still have a copy downloaded to your email client when you return home. However, if you do not set this, then your email client will download and delete all of your email from the web server each time it connects. If you use web mail, it is recommended that you use this option.
You can now close this dialog box and click "Next" and then "Finish" to complete the new account creation.
When you respond to an email, an email client such as Outlook keeps track of what account was used to download the email that is being responded to and will automatically use the account settings from that email account in the response. You can also manually select the account to use when replying or when creating a new email, as indicated above by clicking the "Accounts" button, and the appropriate email address will be put on the email. The flexibility of this is very nice, as you can set up multiple email addresses and accounts, and then just select the appropriate account when responding.
For example, you may have an account set up as the owner of the business with one email address, and then another customer service account set up with another email address, but both of these email account settings are consolidated and managed in one email client. This flexibility gives you the ability to reply to a customer service inquiry as the Customer Service rep or as the owner of the business for even more personal service.
Since many small to medium businesses might be just one owner or one office manager, there is no need to look that way to the world. In the case of catch-all email accounts, you can use this approach to consolidate all the incoming email into one email inbox and select the appropriate email account settings to respond with.
Let's say you have decided to utilize email addresses for
,
,
,
and
Even though these may all be read and answered by the same person, each response can be tailored to look to the recipient as if they had gotten responses from five different people.
To do this, set up each email account in your mail client with the same settings except for the "Name" and "Email address" you want to appear on that particular account, and the identifying name (under the "General" tab) of the particular account. Can you imagine being able to get email in from your web site, read it as one person, respond to it as five different people, and then send all the responses back out through your ISP's email server but it looks like it was mailed by your web site? It's really that simple!
