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Email continues to be a popular way for colleagues to communicate with one another, made possible by email hosting platforms of course. But if those messages are not read or deleted, they certainly aren’t serving their purpose, which is to communicate specific information that often calls for action.  

This year alone, the number of emails that businesses sent and received averaged 89 billion per day, according to Radicati. That number is forecast to grow at an average annual rate of 13 percent over the next four years, reaching over 143 billion by 2016.

“Whether you’re writing a simple thank-you email, sending out a newsletter or welcoming someone to your nonprofit community, using email is a quick, easy way to keep your supporters connected to your organization,” according to David Blyer, founder and CEO of DonorCommunity, a cloud computing software firm that helps nonprofit organizations to create awareness, increase efficiency and broaden awareness of their mission and goals online.

However, if your emails aren’t being read, they aren’t accomplishing much, are they? Blyer recently enumerated several basic rules that will help organizations maintain a positive image and ensure their emails are read by their audience.

First, Blyer advises to make your email uniquely “you” so that it is immediately recognizable.

“You are your brand and your brand is you. Be sure to maintain your organization’s branding and style. Try putting your organization’s name in the subject line and the logo at the top of the email,” he said.

Blyer suggested keeping consistent color themes that match your organization’s branding and finishing emails with a memorable closing line. Use this as a template that you can easily reference for future use.

He also advises the “sender” provide information that readers will value so they will look forward to receiving their emails.

In addition, emails should be easy to read with the most important information at the top.

“Make the email easy to skim so your readers can get the key points quickly. If you’re sending a newsletter, consider including a table of contents to allow people to “click” and link straight to their main interest,” Blyer said. “Your readers will appreciate your efforts to give them what they need to know early in your message.”

Another concern around email and email hosting in particular is preventing data leakage and protecting sensitive information.

DataMotion recently launched its SecureMail Gateway (News - Alert) platform, the latest addition to its email hosting monitoring solution line-up which uses policy-based encryption and exact matching functions to prevent data leakage while protecting sensitive email information, TMCnet reported.

The new and highly intuitive platform includes three types of outbound email filtering and senders can be notified if their messages are routed for secure delivery. The platform also scans all outbound email and attachments, looking for corporate-defined sensitive content and automatically encrypts such messages. The exact matching feature will compare target messages against an actual set of data specific to an organization, such as account numbers in order to reduce false positives.

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