PSPINC Official Company Blog

What is IMAP?

Oct

17

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and is a set of protocols that allows mobile and email desktop applications to access email on an email server. POP, in contrast, stands for Post Office Protocol, which downloads email messages to your device locally before deleting them from the email server. Both are used to access emails on an email server, but they’re both done in different ways.

The Difference Between IMAP and POP

The biggest difference between the two is how each receives emails. IMAP essentially copies email messages to your email app on your mobile or desktop device by pulling from the email server. POP, however, downloads email messages onto your local device and deletes them from the server. The easiest way to think about it comes from an example from CloudFare. Think of IMAP like it’s Google Docs and POP like it’s Microsoft Word. With Google Docs, your documents and changes, from both you and whatever collaborators you might have shared it with, are instantly saved on the cloud, regardless of device. But when using Microsoft Docs, if you’re working with someone else and you make a change to the document, the other person won’t see that change because you’ll only be saving that document to your local computer. Email apps that support IMAP include:

Dreamersi – our web and email hosting option
Gmail
Yahoo mail
Mozilla Thunderbird
Outlook – with options to change to POP, if users want to change it in the settings.

Why IMAP Is Better

businessman with laptop at cafe table on street

With the rise of mobile devices, IMAP makes it easy to seamlessly transition when using phones, desktop, and tablet. Because of how users receive emails with POP, users won’t be able to access their email if they want to open their email in an app on a different device in cases of a lost, damaged, stolen, or even upgraded device. With IMAP, users can just open their email app on a new device without a problem because it’ll just redownload from the server onto the new device. So, using IMAP is a much more secure option than POP.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #dreamersi #email #emailhosting #gmail #google #imap #mozillathunderbird #officetips #outlook #pop #pop3 #smallbusiness #tech #technology #thunderbird #video #web #webhosting #websites #webtools #yahoo #youtube

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 189 “Physical Menu Designs”

Oct

12

You may know that we help design digital menus with ImaMenu, but did you know we also design and redesign physical menus for small businesses, too? We recently helped Ichiban PB, a Japanese restaurant in San Diego, redesign their menu. Two weeks ago, our San Diego team headed over to visit and see the menus in person.

While they were there, the server told them how much the new menus helped since our team added photos and descriptions to their menu items. Not only is it easier for customers to understand now, but it also makes it easier for servers since they no longer have to explain what each item is. So, if you’re looking to design or redesign your physical menus, reach out to our design team to get started!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #customdesign #customerservice #design #digitalmarketing #food #graphicdesign #imamenu #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #menu #menudesign #newsletter #physicalmenu #restaurant #smallbusiness #tech #technology

Market Online with Canva

Oct

10

Marketing online is vital in business, especially small businesses. Most small businesses know that it’s important to have an online presence, but not all of us are skilled graphic designers. With billions of people actively using the internet worldwide, it gives you that much more opportunity to increase your brand’s awareness, build your online community, and increase traffic toward your website, all while promoting your business.

One popular, easy-to-use graphic design tool among digital marketers alike is Canva. With Canva, users can easily design professional social media posts, emails, videos, websites, and more, using their drag-and-drop editor, more than 250,000 free templates, more than 100 premium stock photos, videos, audio, and graphics, and more.

Ways to Market with Canva

1. Website design

With one of Canva’s many professional and customizable templates, design websites one page at a time. Just drag and drop elements to create a very simple wireframe and/or mockup to give web designers an idea of what you’re looking for for your website.

2. Email marketing

Browse design ideas for email newsletters among the various newsletter templates, which makes it easy to design visually-appealing marketing emails, proven to help marketers increase open rates, click rates, and overall retention rates.

3. Social media marketing

Social media marketing design is arguably the most popular use of Canva among marketers. Browse through Canva’s large collection of social media post templates to create engaging content with 100 free images, graphics, videos, and audio tracks. Collaborate with your team with the rest of your team by easily making real-time edits, leaving comments, and assigning tasks with Canva’s Team plan. You can even create a more consistent brand by using Canva’s branding tools to your advantage, which are available with premium plans.

Get professional marketing help which includes but is not limited to social media marketing from our expert team here at PSPINC.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #canva #digitalmarketing #facebook #instagram #linkedin #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #threads #twitter #video #web #youtube

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 188 “Send Large Files Without Uploading to the Cloud”

Oct

5

Since the pandemic hit, so many more everyday interactions, for individuals as well as businesses, occur online. This includes sending files to each other, regardless of how large they may be. The problem with emailing a large file to another person is that many email providers set a limit on how big a file is. For files that are too big, there’s usually an option to link the photo to either your Google Drive, iCloud, or some other cloud storage platform.

But doing it that way just adds steps to the overall process on both sides. To make it easier, we created MegaMail, which lets you send or transfer large files to anyone, anywhere. After signing up, all you have to do is drop files and enter a recipient or several, a subject line, a message, and, optionally, a password, which are the same things you’d add when composing a new email. Then, all the other person has to do is click on the MegaMail link and download the file. Sign up for just $9.99/month or $24.99/month for more storage space and a larger broadcast traffic limit to get started.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#applemail #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #cloud #digitalmarketing #email #gmail #googledrive #icloud #megamail #officetips #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webtools

The Importance of Prioritizing Customer Experiences

Oct

3

Marketing professionals have always known giving customers the best experience possible is important, and that it refers to the entire customer journey rather than ending after making the purchase. Delivering great experiences has only become that much more important. Businesses have the opportunity to maintain and strengthen relationships with customers at every step of the customer journey by building trust.

Building strong relationships between your business and your customers starts with creating exceptional customer experiences. And with so much of our interactions with brands online, customer experiences can make or break a business. According to a report from Salesforce, 79% of customers agree that the experience is just as important as the product or service a company sells. So, prioritizing customer experiences is a necessity today to stand out amongst competitors.

How to Prioritize Customer Experiences

cheerful young waitress communicating to customers

While it’s easy to say how important prioritizing customer experiences is, it’s another to put that into action. A few ways you can do that include:

Exceed expectations

When you give customers what they expect, it’ll satisfy them. It’s when things unexpectedly go wrong when they aren’t happy. But if you can give them more than they expect like adding a welcome gift, thank you card, or even just standout customer service, they’ll be thrilled. When people feel the love, they’ll return the favor by coming back for their next purchase or even recommending your brand to others.

Ask for, listen to, and act on feedback

We’ve explained before why asking for customer feedback is important, and doing so in the form of reviews or some kind of rating system makes it easy. But just asking for feedback means nothing if you don’t do anything about it.

People want to feel heard, and reviews and ratings hold a lot of weight on your business because of how heavily potential customers rely on them. From a business perspective, it’s also important to constantly try to improve your business. With these ratings and reviews being directly about your product, this is the easiest way to do so.

Reward loyalty

There’s a reason loyalty programs work: they build trust and increase customer retention. But there’s an easy way to reward customers’ loyalty as opposed to building a whole program around it. You can reward people with small things like reposting user-generated content with a thank you attached or offering exclusive discounts to show your appreciation.

Benefits of Prioritizing Customer Experiences

a woman in brown apron talking to customer with newspaper open

Prioritizing customer experiences doesn’t just build trust between your business and your customers, but it is also much more cost-effective and less time-consuming compared to trying to obtain new customers. It also results in happier customers, which will result in good customer reviews. And if they really like their experience, it’s possible they’ll become brand advocates, where they’ll market for you by recommending your business to their friends, families, and/or online followers.

So, it’s clear that businesses shouldn’t just consider customers’ experiences, but they should make it a vital part of their marketing strategy. It’s often an overlooked part of the process, but it pays off in the end to make it the best it can be. The reality is that customers are constantly interacting with the brand, even if it isn’t directly with your customer support people. They’re scrolling past ads on social media, watching an influencer promote a product on YouTube, or checking out your Instagram page. So, use that to your advantage by making sure every interaction your business has with customers will keep them coming back.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #branding #business #businesstips #customerexperience #customerfeedback #customerservice #digitalmarketing #ecommerce #experience #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 187 “New ImaMenu Features!”

Sep

28

We’re happy to announce that our easy digital menu builder, ImaMenu, now has new features! After we realized some of our customers were using it to create secret menus, we went straight to work to build out our product to better serve our customers. Now, with ImaMenu, you can:

Enable limited-time access to your menu.
Add a countdown clock.
Add a secret menu passcode and access menu.

Temporary menus are great for those running an event, chefs wanting to experiment with ingredients and/or flavors, and those looking to generate buzz for their restaurant with a secret menu. Sign up for ImaMenu for free today to get started.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #food #imamenu #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #menu #newsletter #pspinc #restaurant #restaurants #sales #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #website #webtools

The Success of Secret Menus

Sep

26

If you’ve ever gone to Starbuck's, McDonalds, or In-N-Out, you’ve probably heard of secret menus before. A secret menu consists of hidden or popular customized menu items that a restaurant can make but doesn’t advertise. Most places that have secret menu items haven’t created them on their own; customers asked for different customizations, and they became popular over time. And since they’re usually created by customers themselves, they gain popularity over time and spread best through word of mouth.

For example, making regular menu items “animal-style” at In-N-Out isn’t part of the menu, but many people would think it is because of how popular it is. It’s been around for so long that no one knows where it came from, not even In-N-Out. Former In-N-Out Vice President, Carl Van Fleet says it first surfaced sometime in the early 1970s, but since the company didn’t create it themselves, they have no idea who did. Regardless, it’s stood the test of time, proving just how popular secret menu items could get.

Benefits of Secret Menu Items

The hard part of succeeding with secret menus is how to market them; you want people to know about them, but not so much that they won’t be “secret” anymore. It takes striking the right balance, being both accessible and exclusive. There isn’t a guaranteed way to get it right, unfortunately, but when it works, it works. Secret menus:

Create exclusivity – customers like feeling like insiders when they shop. Secret menus give them that sense of being “in the know”.
Generate buzz and interest – people love secret menus. It excites them; the prospect of ordering something that isn’t on the menu is exciting.
Give your chefs, baristas, bartenders, and others the opportunity to experiment with new ingredients and flavors without committing to adding them to the menu.
Let chefs, baristas, bartenders, and others take advantage of seasonal ingredients – creating a secret limited-time menu is the perfect solution.
Increase business and revenue.
Reward customers for their loyalty – those in the know receive exclusive and unique dining experiences.

While marketing a secret menu has proven to be difficult, creating one doesn’t have to be. With ImaMenu, you can do just that by enabling limited-time access, adding a countdown clock, and/or adding a menu passcode with a passcode enable message. Sign up for free to get started.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#animalstyle #blog #branding #business #businesstools #food #imamenu #innout #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #mcdonalds #menu #pspinc #restaurant #secretmenu #secretmenuitems #smallbusiness #starbucks #tech #technology #web

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 186 “Extortion Fraud”

Sep

21

Online scams have been around for a long time, but over the last few years, they’ve gotten more popular. Specifically, extortion frauds have become popular as many of our customers have received them in their email inboxes. Extortion frauds usually occur over email and consist of cybercriminals sending threatening messages demanding payment in exchange for not releasing sensitive information. While they may seem threatening, these emails are scams where hackers are just trying to trick people into giving them money. They don’t actually have any sensitive or embarrassing information on you, as they claim.

Our advice is to just mark those messages as spam and delete them from your inbox. As great as spam filters can be, cybercrime continues to get more sophisticated, which makes it easier for emails like these to make it into your inbox. Our Dreamersi email hosting customers have the option of adjusting their spam filters to try to weed emails like these out. If you’d like any help to clean out your inbox or adjust your spam filter, reach out to our support team! They’re always happy to help!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstools #cybersecurity #digitalmarketing #dreamersi #email #emailhosting #marketing #marketingdigital #newsletter #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #security #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #website

Google’s Consent Management Platform (CMP) Changes and What It Means

Sep

19

Have you ever gone to a website only to come across a pop-up asking you to consent to the site using your data? That is what’s called a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) message. But you may have also noticed that not every website shows a GDPR message. That’s because privacy laws in the European Union and the UK are different compared to the U.S. when it comes to collecting users’ data.

Advertisers can use IAB’s Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) as a tool to hold them accountable and to comply with the GDPR as well as the ePrivacy Directive, a privacy law regulating cookie usage, data minimization, and more. When advertising with Google AdSense, Ad Manager, or Ad Mob, Google-certified Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) have IAB’s TCF integrated into them, making it easier to serve ads in the European Economic Area (EEA) and/or the U.K. Equipped with IAB's TCF, Google's CMPs, and GDPR messages, advertisers can easily serve ads in the E.U. and the UK. while complying to their privacy laws.

Google’s New CMP Requirements

Starting January 16, 2024, Google AdSense, Ad Manager, or AdMob will start requiring publishers and developers to use a CMP certified by Google. Why? Because IAB Europe’s TCF released a new version (v2.2) recently that comes with even stricter consent requirements, which include:

No longer accepting “legitimate interest” as a legal base of consent for personalization efforts.
Standardized data retention periods for third-party vendors.
Easy access for users to their CMPs for if they want to withdraw or modify their consent and preferences.

For those working with ad technology providers not registered with TCF, Google makes it easy with its Additional Consent specification. While many are already using Google-certified CMPs, those who aren’t will be affected by these new requirements.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#admanager #admob #advertising #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #cmp #digitalmarketing #eu #europeanunion #gdpr #google #googleadsense #iab #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #smallbusiness #tcf #tech #technology #uk #web

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 185 “Scam Letters”

Sep

14

Recently, our San Diego office received some scam mail disguised as a domain renewal. Upon first glance, it looked like your average domain renewal request, but since we manage our own pspinc.com domain, we immediately realized it was a scam. Apparently, some of our customers have also received similar letters, but have thankfully asked us first if they needed to make a payment. For our web hosting customers, please be aware that our hosting services include domain management (unless you have a separate contract with a separate provider), so there shouldn’t be any additional domain-related charges. If there are, please know that it will come from us at PSPINC directly rather than the domain registrar.

If you ever receive similar scam letters or emails, making payments will potentially result in:

· Unauthorized credit card usage or
· Loss of domain

Luckily, we’re here to assist you with any hosting-related and/or IT-related concerns and issues. So if you ever have any suspicions or questions about these types of scam letters, please reach out to our support team and they’d be happy to help!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.