One Email Address

This is probably not a good title for this article, because it addesses several things regarding your email address. Have you changed your email address simply because you changed ISP's. Maybe you have a your own domain to advertise your business and you get your email at someisp.com. This makes you look like the little guy you are.

There is no reason to change your email address when your business depends on having a reiable means of contact. Your vendors need to be able to contact you and sometimes a carrier will send an email about a file that was closed several months ago. In either case, they should not have to search or call around to get your "new" email address again this year. There are a couple of situations we will address here.

If you are an independent, you sometimes have to get a DSL or broadband over cable connection to the Internet where ever your next storm site might be. If you typically maintain your email on your computer through an email client like Outlook™ or Outlook Express™, then you should not have to use a web based interface just because you are now logging in through a different ISP's network.

You may also want an email address that relays to people who receive email from you your profession. (We offer free email boxes here at AdjustersOnly.net.) You will obviously want to keep your email address even though you might be logging on through another ISP.

How many of you worked for the vendor who actually has www.hisdomain.com, but gets email @aol.com instead of @hisdomain.com. This makes the little guy look just like what he is. It is unprofessional and gives the appearance to potential carriers and independents that you are small time and either can't handle much business or will not have much to pass on to the independent. Afterall, you can't even handle getting email at your own domain. Some people use the excuse, "Everybody already has this address." This is just a flimsy excuse. Everybody can be contacted with one email to update your email address in their contact information. They can always go to the web site you are paying for where they can find your email address if needed. It also will not take long for everybody to figure out what yor new email address is when all of your letter head has the correct new address on it. And finally, any ISP will forward your email to whatever address you want in case someone does send an email to your old address after your switch. Excuse eliminated. Get with the times.

If you have your own domain and you are a vendor, you can also manage your email by setting up an email, or even several emails, for each storm. During the busy 2004 season, you could have had charley@yourdomain.com, frances@yourdomain.com and ivan@yourdomain.com to have your adjusters send their closed files to. This permits for easier tracking of your claims. Of course, getting the independents to send only their closed file to these addresses is another topic. Simple instructions not followed let's you know who to hire next time. (Come on, independent, help out here.) The Internet is the small company equalizer. It can give the impression you are just as capable as the big company. This is not to say that you should be deceptive in presenting your capabilities to potential clients, but it does give the impression that you are detailed oriented.

Basically, all you have to do is keep your incoming email address set to a different mail server than you outgoing. If, for example, your email address is something@adjustersonly.net, you would simply keep your incoming mail server set to mail.adjustersonly.net and your outgoing set to smtp.yourisp.com.

Relaying

When you logon the the Internet through one ISP and you send mail out through another's mail server, this is referred to as relaying. Many ISP's do not permit this in an effort to prevent their connections from being used to send spam. If you use one of the "hotspot" type of connections that are becoming fairly common in truckstops and RV parks, then you may have to set your outgoing email sever to the same as your incoming. These types of ISP's tend to permit relaying. You will probably have to change the setting on your outgoing mail server to Requires Authentication.

In Outlook Express™, for example, you would go to Tools and Accounts again and select your email account on the Mail tab and select Properties. On the Servers tab The last section titled Outgoing Mail Server check the box by My server requires authentication. Then clicking on the Settings button will bring up the following screen where you can edit how you would authenticate. The default is to use the same settings as you use to check your incoming email. The second choice is to select Logon Using where your typer in your user name and password.

You would have a different Username and Password for your incoming and outgoing mail server if you used yahoo.com or hotmsail.com for email. If you use your ISP for both incoming and outgoing, or a service like AdjustersOnly.net, you would use the first choice.