Google Apps
Google Apps is a suite of applications from Google that pull in core services to help you manage your business. Google Apps such as Email, Google Docs, Google Talk, and Google Calendar can be utilized with a unique domain. Example would be if you own www.widgets4sale.com, you can take that domain and brand it across most of the Google Apps. Essentially you would be logging into www.gmail.com but you are sending and receiving email at [email protected].
Other Google Apps features include:
- Custom email address (example above)
- Spreadsheets including presentations
- Tools to utilize for word processing
- A calendar system that is shared (private or both)
- It is globally accessible from anywhere you can connect to the internet.
- https (secured) connection
From a branding standpoint if you are running a non-profit or small business (even just personal), you can create a unique position when communicating amongst your peers and look unified across the board with a professional email account without having a Microsoft exchange server set up.
Ideally at some point I would like to put together a video tutorial for the process of making the change over into Google Apps. For now I will settle on some basic information.
1) Verify you own your domain (add a txt record to your domain; upload a file to your website, and etc…)
2) Overall Concept: Update your domain (GoDaddy, 1and1.com, Blue Host, Fatcow, and etc…) to route email through Google Apps mail servers.
3) To put this into motion you will add MX records to your domain after you log into your administration panel where you purchased your domain.
4) This provides you some additional information: Configure Email Delivery
Once you have accomplished verifying you own your domain and updated the mail records to point to Google Apps, you are up and on your way of using its services. The first step is to create permissions for other users if applicable and updated the appearance such as your logo, colors, and login.
Gmail Labels
Remember that movie Ace Ventura: Pet Detective? Exactly! Finkel is Einhorn and Einhorn is Finkel! The same concept minus the sexual twist applies to Google Labels. Folders equal Labels. They provide a lot of flexibility in the sense that you can apply several labels to the same conversation (email). Below I did a quick video tutorial regarding setting up labels. Google’s Help Guide on Labels.
Gmail Filtering System
Using filters in Gmail is an incredible benefit that comes in to be super handy if you are managing several email addresses in your account. Maybe you get a lot of newsletters and you want them filtered out of your inbox? Honestly there are so many different ways to view this and how it can be utilized.
Options you have after you have chosen “what to filter” is skip the inbox, mark as read, star it, apply label, forward it, delete it, never send it to spam, always mark it as important, and never mark it as important. You can use a combination of these together with one filter. Again the options are endless. Google’s Help Guide on Filters.
Below is a video tutorial that I put together to help step you through setting up a Filter.
Using Gmail to Send and Receive Branded Email
I currently have 8 different email addresses that I use with my free Gmail account. It is wonderful because I am just logging into one area to manage all of them. Below is another video tutorial on how to set this up in your free gmail account and Google Apps. If you’re not using Google Apps, make sure that when you set up your new email address with your domain registrar that you have it forward all incoming mail to your free gmail account. Then when you have your email address set up in Gmail you can select “reply with address mail was received”. I cover this below in the video.
Overall there are so many options that I could talk about and am struggling not going into detail about every single little thing. I have used Google Apps for our Non-Profit Niemann-Pick Children’s Fund and set the program up for several other businesses. If you have any questions or need help setting this up please connect with me.
Bonus
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Dynamic, high-energy executive with history of performance-oriented leadership to e-commerce sales and marketing within the online marketing and advertising industry. MichaelStults.com is where I share my thoughts on different marketing methods, wordpress, leadership, and various topics that I feel inspired to write about. Please take time to learn more about Rare Disease at www.BriParDun.com