One question that I often get is, “How can I cut down on the amount of spam I get?”. Well if your hosting provider gives you the spam fighting tool called SpamAssassin, it can be a very easy process. In only six steps you can go from looking at nothing but crap to going back to only seeing E-mails you want to see.
1. Navigate yourself to the SpamAssassin section inside your control panel.
From cPanel, this is usually done by logging in, then going to “Mail” and then clicking on the link that says “SpamAssassin”.
2. Now this screen might get you a little worried. There are a few buttons, talk of disable and enabled services and all that jazz. Don’t worry, you can not break anything here.
What you need to do next is click on the button or link that says “Enable SpamAssassin”.
3. You should notice after that happens your current status changes to “SpamAssassin is currently: Enabled”. This is good but we are not done yet. Next I want you to click on “Configure SpamAssassin”.
4. Here you see a lot of confusing text and empty boxes. We are not going to worry about the more advanced options you can edit in here. We might save that for another podcast.
What I want you to do now is change your default value to “5″. This is a good average score for grading the spam you get. While tweaking this you might want to lower or raise the score, depending on how aggressive the spam you get is.
5. Next to the “rewrite_header subject” text I want you to put in a value that would easily be picked up on by any E-mail client out there. For example I have the word “CRAP” in mine. This way later on down the road, any spam that graded with the score “5″ will have the word “CRAP” in front of it.
6. Now go into your favorite E-mail client and create a new filter or rule. Have it send everything that has the word “CRAP” (or whatever other word you picked in the previous step) in the subject line to the spam folder or trash.
Till you know what it is catching and you can confirm it is all spam I would send it to a “half way there” folder before actually putting it in the trash. This way you can check for false positives and adjust your score as you need to. If all went well, then your spam intake should be cut down or totally assassinated.
Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 100!
Hosting Service With a Smile?
Web hosting is not all about some guy sitting in his basement watching all the cool blinking lights on a server rack. To be successful in Web hosting you also have to learn how to treat your customers right. Customer service plays a big roll and if you are ignoring that fact – you might pay for it down the road.
Web hosts, you have a hard job. Now I know it isn’t easy watching every single employee or contracted worker to see if he or she is doing their job, but the least you can do is strong arm them into picking up a few good tips when dealing with clients.
One good way of personalizing your responses back to a customer would be to address them by name. Don’t just say “Sir” – say “John”. This way they at least know you read the first line of their E-mail or heard at least some of their correspondence to you.
Another helpful tip would be to greet them from the first. Don’t just go into addressing their question, complaint or issue. Let them know that you appreciate them for contacting you. Here would be a good example:
Then you can get into the technical answer of the question.
Last but not least, you should leave them with a good taste of your services in their mouth. Don’t just end with the answer, give them the assurance that if they are still confused or if they have any other questions they can come and ask you again.
Too often people get one answer and think, “Well that isn’t what I wanted to hear. Now what?!” and that should not be the case. They should know they can come back to you for more information no matter what the topic of conversation might be.
Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 100!