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Businesses of all sizes can benefit from an online presence that enables better customer interaction and more efficient communication. Email plays a major role in establishing a Web presence for a small business. Whether it replaces direct mail or simply serves as a new tool for communicating, small business have a lot to gain by choosing an appropriate email solution.
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Free Email
Free email programs for small businesses are easy to use and simple to set up. While using a free personal email service such as Yahoo! is certainly an option, many email providers also offer free business email. These services feature multiple accounts that can be linked together, advanced organization features, large storage capacities and integration with other business tools from the same company. Some free business email services even allow business customers to use shorter or more professional-sounding domain names in their email addresses.
Paid Services
Paid business email services pick up where free services leave off. Often a free service is simply a stripped-down version of the paid service. Paid email services eliminate advertising, increase storage space and allow businesses to access more advanced organizational features and integration of tools such as calendars, spreadsheets and documents. Paid email services charge by the month or year. They typically vary in price based on the number of accounts, whether the business uses email as part of a package that includes website hosting or other products and other factors.
Social Networking
Some social networking services offer email solutions that provide an alternative for small businesses. Social network-based email often comes as a hybrid of social network posting, traditional email and instant messaging. It allows businesses that use viral marketing or already have a presence on a social networking site to give customers a place to communicate with sales staff or public relations staff. Social network email leaves room for small businesses to be innovative in their use of the Internet as a place to promote their brands and attract customers.
Instant Messaging
Instant messaging serves as a complement to and, in some cases, replacement for small business email. Some instant message providers combine their messaging services with their email, delivering new messages to users' inboxes and integrating all forms of communication into a single piece of software. Instant messaging is useful for communication among employees without the need for company cell phones. It can also serve as a way for employees to respond directly to customers through a Web-based chat service that replaces a traditional email exchange.
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