Tips To Help You Become A Gmail Wizard

Don’t let email drag you down… use these tips to conquer your inbox.
For many new entrepreneurs and fledgling business owners, creating an email account is near the bottom of their to-do list. However, as the leading method of communications nowadays, email’s importance shouldn’t be overlooked. There’s no shortage of choice regarding email providers; some people purchase a web hosting package that comes with matching email domains, while others are happy to register an address with a free email provider.
In terms of the latter, there’s no one quite like Google. Launched exactly twelve years ago, their Gmail package has blossomed from a limited AOL/Hotmail rival into the world’s most popular email service – Statista reported in February that Gmail now has one billion users. Despite previously being associated with spammers, it’s become the weapon of choice for many startup businesses. Seeing a corporate email address suffixed with ‘@gmail.com’ is no longer an indication of unprofessionalism.
The process of creating a Gmail account is relatively straightforward, via a 26MB Android app, an 18MB iOS download or a web-based account creation process. Many people will already have some form of Google account if they visit YouTube or have previously registered for ancillary Google services like AdWords, but creating a new account is a simple process involving just one registration form. The greater challenge involves finding an available address among the one billion active accounts, although an original company name is fairly likely to be free in some permutation.
As a cloud-hosted email package Gmail relies on internet access to download new messages. An email viewed on your phone will subsequently be marked as read next time you log in via a tablet or laptop. Messages are divided into three different folders – Primary, Social and Promotions. The latter two are handy for filing status updates and marketing communiqués away from important messages, which can be starred or marked as important for future reference. Less important message threads can be muted (effectively hidden without being deleted), or archived.
Gmail can also be used with one of its greatest rivals – Microsoft Outlook. However, the process of installation involves configuring Gmail for Outlook, which is the opposite of what normally happens. As long as IMAP has been enabled and account details are entered manually, there shouldn’t be any barrier to combining Outlook’s functionalities and offline accessibility with Gmail’s industry-leading spam filter. Which reportedly ensures that 99.9 per cent of typical inbox messages are non-spam.
Malicious motives are taken very seriously by Google, and some features of Gmail are particularly well-suited to small business users. The ability to identify when and where an email account has been accessed (and on which device) is a useful safety feature, while the option of dispatching messages at a specified future time is great for maintaining professionalism during late-night working sessions. Using Gmail through Google’s own Chrome browser introduces facilities like offline email viewing plus drag-and-drop attachments. Finally, having one terabyte of storage with a premium account means there’s no need to delete message threads or remove attachments – even the free Gmail service offers 15GB of storage. That should be enough for any small business or new enterprise.

Partner with a platform you can trust with VPS – our SLA guarantees your satisfaction