The main complaint of employees about their employers is that they don’t consider what effects certain changes have on them. There are employers only out for the all-mighty buck and employees are secondary. But, in all fairness, employers do exist who want to improve business but not at the expense of their employees.

As a business owner, you have staff in some capacity. For online businesses, you may have freelancers who contract with you for work or people that you hire. In each case, someone else is depending on you for part or all of their income. Treating those people fairly is of extreme importance to your business’ success.

In busy times, you don’t want employees to bail on you and you don’t want to let them go in tough times if you can help it. What is a business owner to do? Your attitude towards your employees is the key to the solution.

Be Honest

Honesty is truly the best policy in business. Tell your employees the real deal. You may not be able to go into detail about everything, but give them a heads up as to how the company is doing. Let them know that changes may need to be made.

Get Their Input

Allow them to help towards their own ends. Employees are not puppets. They are intelligent professionals who can come up with ideas to assist in restructuring. No one wants to get rid of loyal employees especially those who are part of a well-oiled machine.

Being up front with and asking for feedback from your employees can inspire all kinds of surprising things. They may even agree to a pay cut to keep everyone on board. Cross train employees in different areas to make them more valuable when business is slow.

The Golden Rule Applies Here Too

Sure, there may be times when business changes require layoffs or cutting contractors. Find out about their situations and try to help as much as possible. Treating employees with dignity and respect goes a long way in influencing how they revere you.

What would your helpers and employees think? You should ask yourself that question if you find the need to cutback or make changes to your company. If you consider things from your employees or contractor’s position and maintain a positive attitude, restructuring might not have to see anyone without a job. Include employees as much as you can in decisions that affect them. They are an important part of your success in business and should be treated as such.

Provided by Jim Horton - North Star Strategic IT
Your Denver source for IT computer support, network consulting and planning, voice over IP (VoIP) solutions, and so much more. Cisco Partner - VoIP and Unified Communications Microsoft Partner - Small Business Server Specialists Schedule time with one of our highly qualified network technology specialists

Business Structure Changes – What Would Your Employees Think?

However, there is another type of spam filter that takes the game to an entirely new level. Email delivery becomes nearly impossible especially if you are cold calling or using mass email marketing to a larger group of people. This spam filtering is done at the internet service provider level. Internet service providers have better resources and motivation for providing excellent spam filters for their customers. Internet providers pride themselves on their ability to keep customers’ email spam free; this is important to their business because providers who cannot get the job done will lose customers to providers who can.

Internet service providers are global companies with influence to prove it. As a marketer, if you cannot prove to them you are a valid online business and give them a good reason not to block your emails, then you will see tons of your hard work go down the drain as campaign after campaign winds up trapped in a spam filter long before potential customers can see them. In a nut shell, internet providers are highly motivated to protect their customers. To do this, they have put in place a way to authenticate merchants and weed out fraudulent operators that will only misuse the trust people put in their email and ISP’s.

Your first order of business will be to create a relationship with the major internet providers who hold the key to contacting your customers. You will have to prove to them you are a valid online business and not a scam artist. There are three important things you will need to show them: You have a real product; you have been in business for a decent amount of time; and that your business will continue long enough for you to offer customer service after the sale. Overall, these are reasonable requirements especially for access to potentially thousands of customers.

Once you have passed the first round of authentication, each internet provider will want to see that you conduct your email marketing with integrity. You do not have to look far to see that email marketing is one of the most abused marketing techniques in business since the snake oil salesman. The main thing the internet providers want to know is that you are not going to abuse their customers in any way, as with scams. Assure them that you have the best interest of the customer in mind should you be lucky enough to be granted access.

You can best learn the process of being approved by entering into negotiations with a major internet provider through whom you hope to send out email marketing letters. Once you have completed dealings with the first, the rest will be similar in nature. In fact, after the first time, you will likely progress more quickly since you will know the ins and outs of dealing with them, and you will be able to show each successive provider that you have been approved by the first. Soon you will have an excellent reputation that will open the doors more readily. Take your time and work through this process the potential rewards are definitely worth the time and energy you will expend.

Provided by Jim Horton - North Star Strategic IT
Your Denver source for IT computer support, network consulting and planning, voice over IP (VoIP) solutions, and so much more. Cisco Partner - VoIP and Unified Communications Microsoft Partner - Small Business Server Specialists Schedule time with one of our highly qualified network technology specialists

Gaining the Trust of ISP and Why it is Important

Most children have an email address they use to socialize with their friends or other purposes. It is a great way for children to keep in touch with their friends and it is free. Unfortunately, with the rising incidence of dangerous spam emails, children need protection.

Your child is as likely to receive spam email as you are. These emails may contain adult or pornographic material. It is impossible to stop all spam from your child’s inbox but there are things you can do to help reduce the amount of spam they receive.

Tips to help protect your children from spam

Filters for their email
Use the existing email filters with you email client to filter your child’s email. You can direct it into certain folders and filter spam into the spam or trash folder. Your email program has preferences you can set as to what to do with incoming mail. You can block it, trash it, or let it come in.

The email filter uses certain words or phrases to determine where the mail needs to go. For instance, if the email has words such as “hot babes”, it will go to the trash bin and the email address is automatically blocked.

Block spam
Most email clients have a spam blocker included in their service. If your child’s email does not have this, you may want to buy one or switch to an email service that does. The spam blocker will block spam messages from getting into the inbox. It checks the email server at ten-minute intervals, deletes spam mail and any viruses it detects. Acceptable email is allowed to pass through the server and into the inbox.

Create a white list
You can make a list of trusted mail for your child to receive. List the addresses of relatives, trusted friends, and other addresses you feel are appropriate for your child to receive mail from. These messages will go to the inbox with no problem but all other mail will be blocked.

Log in and monitor
Check your child’s email account regularly to make any changes you need to. You also want to make sure the spam filter and block are working, as you want them to.

You can use your email account spam filter to have your child’s email forwarded to you. You can have a copy of any email sent or received in your child’s account.

Your child needs to be informed about the dangers of spam and scam emails and what to do if they receive any.

Provided by Jim Horton - North Star Strategic IT
Your Denver source for IT computer support, network consulting and planning, voice over IP (VoIP) solutions, and so much more. Cisco Partner - VoIP and Unified Communications Microsoft Partner - Small Business Server Specialists Schedule time with one of our highly qualified network technology specialists

How to Shield your Children from Spam