As of today, you will have the opportunity to opt into a FREE  14 – day trial of HulloMail SmartVoicemail’s paid features! You will have access to the Individual Greetings function, where you can record a special valentine’s message in time for your beloved to receive on the day! Plus, longer Hullos and voicemails mean more time to tell your special someone just how much you care.

All you have to do, is accept the in-app invite you will receive as a drop-down message. When you see the prompt to ‘press here’ – get pressing! Once you have accepted the invite, you’re good to go, for 14 days from that day!

Just our way of sharing the love …

Throughout these last few weeks, there has been emphasis placed on how HulloMail benefits you on an individual level. While this is important (and also very true), HulloMail of course is not strictly limited to personal use. Businesses have found HulloMail to be incredibly efficient when it comes to flowing and uninterrupted voice communications.

The opening quote up there comes from Anna Smee, the director of Hundred. Within the Hundred consultation group, communication heavily relies on the use of smartphones, in order to respond to clients quickly. This is why the ability to receive important messages that would otherwise be lost or delayed when data connection is low or non-existent, is crucial. When it comes to the benefits of using HulloMail within their business, Smee comments: “We can now respond to our customers and our colleagues much more rapidly, and crucially more reliably. We are no longer at the mercy of the mobile phone networks’ coverage and have improved capacity to deliver even greater customer service.”

The second case study, which can also be found here on our website, involves a business that relies on similar requirements. Call-handling is a situation that can quickly become complicated when communications become interrupted – the team at A Suit That Fits found that HulloMail ensured that all customer enquiries were received and resolved immediately, as the HulloMail service is used to take calls where the Customer Service team are unable to get to the phone. Warren Bennett has expressed his satisfaction with: “It has become an integral element of our customer service strategy, and we rely on it daily to help us deliver the very best service to our customers. Using HulloMail has increased productivity of our Customer Service team as they are able to prioritise calls effectively.”

You don’t have to be a specific type of business to reap the advantages of the HulloMail service. You don’t have to be a specific type of person either, that’s the beauty of HulloMail’s dynamism.

Natalie Bell

Not only this, but the way in which we put the ‘voice’ in voicemail ultimately means a more accessible service for everyone overall. Better than that of any other operator. That’s right, I said it. I went there.

This is especially true of the Hullo feature – it’s the ideal in instant voice messaging tools [exclusive to us] that you can use to contact people without having to suffer an entire phone call. At this point you’ve probably grabbed your computer monitor and exclaimed, “But as a HulloMail user, I already know about this feature. We all know about it. Why are you mentioning it again? Who do you think you are?? Was that the doorbell?? WHO AM I??”

The reason I bring up this well-known feature again is to ensure that you are all getting the most out of it as is humanly possible. It’s a key feature within the HulloMail phone app, and has an incredible amount of possible uses and benefits. We just want you to have the best of the service!

Our still-running competition, as you know, encourages you all to use the Hullo feature. Judging by the entries we have received so far, it isn’t hard to see that Hullos are extremely fun to record, a dynamic and versatile message medium and much faster than composing a text message. It is in this light that we encourage you all to make the most of Hullos – perhaps begin by sending us your entry to the competition? This iPad 2 WiFi isn’t going to win itself [it would be a conflict of interest].

Natalie Bell

As with the Android, get 5 of your friends to sign up to HulloMail, using your Voucher Code, and bag yourself 6 months’ free subscription to HulloMail SmartVoicemail. There’s literally no room for error, it’s dead easy. Plus, I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d personally high five whoever get’s 1000 years’ free subscription – I’m even thinking I’ll go one better and buy you a beer [or cocktail, if you're feeling fancy].

Just to refresh your memories, here is a reminder of the Voucher Code process:

And the never-ending chain of Voucher Codes and invites can begin! Remember there’s no limit to the number of months/years you can build up with your code [I would advise exploiting it wherever you can]. Have fun with your new feature!

Natalie Bell

The good news is that I have not lead you all astray, and there is actually something worth your time behind all this build-up.
I present to you the HulloMail H-Factor Christmas Singing Competition!

I know what you’re thinking. “What a long-winded title…” Well to be perfectly honest with you it is simply known as ‘The H-Factor’, but some room has to be made for description. I would like to stress that The H-Factor is nothing like The X-Factor – at least not in the sense of name, nor the sense of employing a rather [incredibly] intimidating [deluded] judging panel. This is merely for some festive fun! There will be no real ‘judgement’ beyond that of deciding which entrant wins the prize.

Oh, did I forget to mention what the prize is? It’s an iPad 2 WiFi, you know, no big deal …

This is, after all, a Christmas competition – therefore all you have to do is send us your best renditions of your favourite Christmas carols, sung by you, via Hullo message!

The competition begins today and will finish at midnight (GMT) on the 3rd of January 2012, so you’ll need to warm up those vocal cords and get singing sharpish! Your recording can be one of yourself, a friend or family member, your children, a hobo on the street – anyone you like! Whoever has the best entry will win an iPad 2 Wifi plus a free subscription to HulloMail SmartVoicemail for one year – two runners up will also win a years’ subscription each.

The winner and the runners up will have their entries posted on the HulloMail Facebook page, for everyone to hear! What are you waiting for? A bus? NO. So get singing!

UK & USA residents can send Hullos here: 7777888999
Ireland residents can send Hullos here: 777888999

Alternatively, everyone can send their Hullos to this email address: hfactor@hullomail.com
Just to make your lives that bit easier. You’re welcome, you don’t have to thank me *grins in a smug manner*

If you feel you need a reminder as to how Hullo messaging works, do not fear young squire, simply visit our website for help: http://hullomail.com/uk/sendhullos.html

Merry Christmas!

Loquax Competitions

He then suddenly picks up: ‘Hello?’

Elated I reply, ‘Hey Joe! How are you?’

‘I’m good and how are you?’, he inquires.

I begin to answer, preparing to discuss possible pub crawling [cow tipping?] scenarios, until I hear this obnoxiousness down the phone:

“HA! Just kidding, I’m not actually here, leave a message”, followed by the familiar ‘beep’.

Needless to say I was hurt. Well not entirely hurt but I was mildly disgruntled to say the least. Yet somewhere, Joe was undoubtedly laughing to himself, thrilled that he had managed to fool me – on top of just about everyone else [as it turned out]. He personalized his operator voicemail message deliberately just to mess with our heads, knowing the affect it would have on his sober and significantly cow-less friends.

It does go to express, however, how much fun one can get out of certain voicemail features, which leads me to my point – here at HulloMail we’re always thinking of new ways to make your voicemailing experience a pleasant one, and believe there should be fun ways in which you are able to bring your own personality to the app.

Thus, I place emphasis on our Individual Greetings feature in the paid-for app! Those of you who have subscriptions to HulloMail SmartVoicemail are able to record unique greeting messages for each of your contacts – which they will hear upon leaving you a voicemail. When you think about it, this is incredibly useful for conveying a simple message that doesn’t need a lengthy phone call to describe, such as ‘Hey Bob, I’ll be in meetings all day today, will call you back this evening.’

Perhaps you will record a fun or silly message for a sibling? Then have a separate more personal recording for your significant other. Or maybe you will follow Joe’s example and relentlessly annoy your friends to the point of them wanting no further contact? [Joe now resides in Mexico. Whether this is due to his personal commitments, or that we chased him out with pitchforks and torches, is irrelevant].

You may be thinking ‘How is this any better than standard voice-mail services, where you can record yourself in a similar way, as Joe did?’ Well my answer to you, reader, is this: firstly, it just is. Secondly, this feature’s uniqueness derives from your ability to have a different greeting per contact – it’s more personal and a lot more fun.

Make the most of the feature and be creative! And Joe, upon your return from Mexico, we’ll go on a pub-tipping-cow-crawl…[??]

Natalie Bell

All you have to do is take a look at your automatically-generated Voucher Code (found under ‘Settings’, then under ‘Invite’ in the HulloMail app), then press the ‘Select and Invite’ button to give this to your friends and family, get them to sign up to our service using the code, and for every 5 people you sign up you’ll get 6 months’ free subscription to HulloMail SmartVoicemail and all it’s features – it’s just that easy!

The best part is there’s no limit to how many months’ subscription you can build up, so go crazy with those invitations people! If you want those 1000 years: there’s 166[ish] sets of 6 months in 1000 years, and you need 5 people a time to sign up – that’s around 830 loved ones you need to get in touch with right this instant and send your code. Or is it more people than that? Or is that actually 1000 months? I don’t know, I’m not in this job because I’m a mathematician. Also, once your invited friends have signed up they’ll receive a code too, and can get 5 other friends to sign up and get their 6 months’ free subscription, and those people can get a code and … you get the idea there.

This feature is currently available for Android, it will soon become available to those of you with an iPhone or a BlackBerry device – so you can stop that panicking right now.

Natalie Bell

One year ago, we observed the number of subscribers to Android beginning to increase. This has accelerated dramatically within the last 3 months – surpassing BlackBerry subscribers. The iPhone, however, has remained a comfortable constant and continues to be our app’s highest grossing device out of the three.

The following article depicts the shift in subscriptions with regards to BlackBerry devices in the US, and makes for an interesting read: http://bit.ly/rAQRT

Natalie Bell

It is in light of this [and for a bunch of other nice reasons] that we beautiful people of HulloMail wish to announce the release of Access Control for BlackBerry. Having already successfully introduced our anti phone-hacking component to the iPhone and Android apps, we are pleased to say that the BlackBerry app now encompasses the same qualities . As with the iPhone and Android, this new element for BlackBerry will provide you with additional protection against phone-hacking; employing a prevention and detection mechanism that renders all unauthorised attempts to access your private messages completely pointless.

Within the BlackBerry app, Access Control offers you the option of blocking all ‘call-in-access’ to your account, so that messages can only be retrieved from within the HulloMail app itself, and your email account. You can also decide if you wish to receive a notification for each time your messages are accessed, for easy monitoring. In addition, Access Control enforces PIN entry, if you prefer to call-in to retrieve your voicemails.

Please be wary of other third-party voicemail providers who do not enforce PIN entry with their service!

In short, all our supported devices now come with the protection you need. Your messages are safe.

Natalie Bell

After reading the high-profile reports regarding the various phone-hacking cases, we wanted to provide a service which would give you total confidence in the security of your voicemail account.

The reason phone-hacking is possible is that voicemail services make it really easy for you to call and retrieve messages with no security measures. Unfortunately it is straightforward for unscrupulous individuals to “spoof” caller phone numbers and therefore gain access to voicemail

Today we’ve launched a new version of our SmartVoicemail™ service designed to provide protection against unauthorised and undetected access to private voice messages.

For our iPhone and Android paid users, BB coming soon; we’ve launched new app versions including a new feature set called Access Control

Access Control allows you to block all ‘call-in access’ to your account so messages are only retrieved from within the HulloMail app and email. Additionally, you may opt to receive a notification each time your messages are accessed, providing a complete audit trail and peace of mind. You also have the option to switch-off online access to messages via your ‘My HulloMail’ portal.

As we offer call access as a back up mechanism, we will be enforcing PIN entry as a default setting for those of you wishing to dial-in to access voice messages

This is what it looks like on the iPhone 2.1.0 and Android 3.5.0:

If you do however regularly call in we appreciate that PIN entry can be annoying. As a HulloMail Paid user you can disable PIN using Access Control but we recommend you then enable access detection by setting Access Notification to ON.

Further FAQ’s can be found here.

I believe our Access Control feature set is simply unequalled by the mobile network operators and other third party voicemail providers.

Please take the time to set your call access PIN in the coming days…

Thanks

Andy Munarriz founder & CEO