Archive for the ‘communication’ Category

What’s the best time to send an email?

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

In a previous post I mentioned that you shouldn’t believe what you read about Tuesday’s being the best day to send a mail. I have been looking at some recent email stats from emaillabs and Tuesday’s is the most popular day to send an email with 25.4% being sent on Tuesdays, yet Wednesday is the most popular day for people opening the emails. This is confirmed by stats from the EmailStatsCenter.com.

But, just to prove my point I then found the following information from emailcenter that says Thursday is the most popular day. Their view is that this is the best day for consumers as they are just starting to think about the weekend.

Adding my own comments to this I would say that the most popular days are probably best avoided and your email could be lost in the sea of emails that arrive in peoples in boxes. Further to this as most people are already doing it is best to avoid early Monday as all people do on a Monday morning is delete the emails they don’t want to deal with. Ultimately, the only way to tell the best time is to either ask your customers or keep trying until you find the best time. You might find that this becomes one way that you choose to segment your customer base.

Posted in communication, eBusiness, eMail marketing | No Comments »

Google sites

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

It has been pointed out that the example link has been removed by the website. I wasn’t aware that this occurred. Are you happy to proceed without having seen this?

Software development projects can be a tricky business at the best of times, but if you throw in a virtual team, some time differences and possibly different cultures and there is definitely some cause for concern.

The following can be applied to any business project and is more about making use of ebusiness activities rather than software development.

Projects require a massive amount of communication depending on the number of stakeholders involved. The bigger and more complex the project the greater the number of stakeholders. Equally the larger the project team. Developing communication within the project team is critical and ensuring everyone has all the communication can be a challenge. If the project is over an extended period there is a danger that one member of the team may leave or be off sick. It then makes it difficult to get new project team members up to speed.

Recently I have used Google sites to overcome these issues, providing a free collaboration space for developing your project it offers small businesses a great way to communicate as a team.

In my case all project documentation has gone on to the site and designs for websites are uploaded as pages. This then ensures that everyone is working from the latest documents, plus you can add comments or questions against screens or documents. It is key that all questions that would usually occur in emails are captured in the site. This provides a stored conversation that other or new team members can reference at a later date. It also prevents side conversations occurring. The whole thing is searchable which makes it easy to find things and like a wiki people can add to it as they like. (Although various admin rights can be granted)

The project team have liked it as a collaboration tool and the consensus is that it has really helped with the communication. It also notifies people when changes occur so no one is left in the dark about updates to the project.

You don’t have to use Google there are other options, but as an out of the box solution it has worked well so far. I will probably start to use the same function to collaborate with clients in the near future as we operate an open and honest policy.

Posted in communication, eBusiness, projects | No Comments »