Smartphones of today (like the Blackberry, iPhone, or Droid), make for useful little devices – especially when it comes to checking email when you’re away from the office.
Problem is, many small businesses are using a “POP3” email service, which is more single location/consumer-oriented.
Entrepreneur.com explains why POP3 might not be your best choice:
“Short for “Post Office Protocol 3,” POP3 downloads messages to your device’s e-mail client, such as Outlook or Entourage, and then deletes them from the server. So if you check messages from multiple devices — say, a laptop at home, a desktop in the office and a smartphone in between — each of their inboxes is different.”
A more efficient solution is an e-mail system based on Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). This system keeps the inboxes of your devices (laptop, desktop, smartphone, etc.) in sync by giving each device a copy fo the message but preserving the original on your server.
How is this helpful? Say you check your email on your laptop in the morning, read a message with a pertinent detail on it, and leave it in your inbox. Later that afternoon, you need the exact wording of that pertinent information containted in the morning’s email — but you don’t have your laptop with you. If you have your smartphone connected via IMAP, you can easily pull up the message and get what you need.
Quick, efficient, and effective — and a lifesaver sometimes, too.
Check with your IT department or your “go-to” IT folks for information on setting this up. If you don’t have an “go-to” IT provider, email me at [email protected] and I’ll give you some recommendations!