Help, my emails are a mess!!

I’m asked regularly, how can I work smarter with my emails?  In most cases, this is because customers have been signed up onto an old protocol for mail delivery called POP3, or Post Office Protocol.  POP3 was very popular in the early days of the internet, with most Internet Service Providers, giving a POP3 email account to use with their service, ie @bigpond.com or @ozemail.com.au (oh the good old days!).

This type of email account works by storing messages on a mail server, and your email client (for example Outlook) connects and downloads a copy of the waiting messages, into your inbox.  This used to be popular, and worked well, when we were receiving emails only on one PC in one location, but like everything else, we have evolved to be using emails on tablets, mobile phones, computers, web mail etc.

The problem with POP3, those same messages that downloaded on your computer at home, download on your mobile and your tablet, but there is no synchronisation between any of these, so you delete a message on your computer, its still on your mobile phone!  This is even more frustrating when you are running a business!  So what’s the answer?  There is another protocol called IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) that can be used, which improves the synchronisation of emails, you can delete from one device and it deletes on the others, but there are drawbacks to this as well, you can’t synchronise calendar, and your mail host must support IMAP.

By far the greatest solution, has been the advent of services such as Microsoft Office365 and Google G.Suite.  These work by tapping into the mailboxes from each device, using a different type of protocol, which allows everything in the mailbox to be synchronised and always up to date on each of your devices.  So you’ll get an email that will show on your home computer, it will show on your mobile and tablet, you delete it on any of these devices, and it deletes on all of them!  Simple and easy!

Fusion Focus offer assistance to migrate your old data from a POP3 or IMAP account and set up and configure your new account on either G.Suite or Office365, depending on what solution works best for you.

So if you’re sick of spending extra time in your day, checking the same emails in multiple locations, possibly accidentally missing emails because of this, you should talk to us about moving your email to one of these enterprise grade systems as soon as possible.  If you have any questions, please contact us.