E-mail Campaign Do’s

The goal is to connect and engage with a targeted group of potential customers, followers, partners, and other people you’re trying to influence with your personal brand.

So, take in consideration this tips for your e-mail campaign:

* Keep it short—1-2 paragraphs is great.

* Keep it relevant and add value.

* Send an email out every 21-30 days.

* Include 3-4 links to internal website pages, your LinkedIn profile, or articles or other content you’ve written.

* Include an offer only for email recipients.

* Make sure your subject line rocks. Check out this from Marketing Sherpa.

* Follow CAN-SPAM guidelines and always offer an opt-out.

More information...

Overload: doing many things at once can make us less efficient

(Fragment of article written By John Naish, for dailymail.co.uk)

Multi-tasking has rapidly taken over our lives, to the point where we look woefully lax if we’re doing just one thing at a time.

We think nothing of texting while also watching television, surfing the internet and talking to our family.

Indeed, drug companies are busy developing products to enhance our mental efficiency so that we can do even more.

But scientists are discovering that today’s mania for cramming everything in at once is creating a perilous cocktail of brain problems, from severe stress and rage in adults to learning problems and autism-like behaviour in children.

It also, ironically, often makes us less efficient. Advances in medical-scanning technology mean we can now watch what happens in the brain when people try to perform more than one complex task at a time. And the news isn’t good.

The human brain doesn’t multi-task like an expert juggler; it switches frantically between tasks like a bad amateur plate-spinner.

The constant effort this requires means that doing even just two or three things at once puts far more demand on our brains compared with if we did them one after another.

The pioneer of this research is Professor Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at the world-renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He scanned volunteers’ heads while they performed different tasks and found that when there is a group of visual stimulants in front of you, only one or two things tend to activate your brain, indicating we’re really only focusing on one or two items.

In other words, our brains have to skitter to and fro inefficiently between tasks. But the real problem occurs when we try to concentrate on the two tasks we are dealing with, because this then causes an overload of the brain’s processing capacity.

This is particularly true when we try to perform similar tasks at the same time - such as writing an email and talking on the phone - as they compete to use the same part of the brain. As a result, your brain simply slows down.

Even just thinking about multi-tasking can cause this log-jam, as Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at the University of London, reported a few years ago.

Read more...

Are you a Supertasker?

Interesting thoughts from Cody Burke, a senior analyst at Basex.

"...We all believe we are special. Indeed, that’s why we would all likely be in agreement that talking on the phone or texting while driving is dangerous and should not be done.

Yet when push comes to shove, we may make exceptions for ourselves, and take a call that comes in while we careen down the freeway.

We tell ourselves that we can handle it, that we are adept multitaskers, or supertaskers, even as we give dirty looks to others doing the same thing.

It appears that some of us are right about being supertaskers, but it is probably not who you think (meaning not you)."

Keep reading...

Are web sources credible?

That overly broad question is based on the false premise that Web sources are more or less of equal quality.

Instead, ask two targeted questions:

1) How much trust — or how little trust — should one place in specific Internet sources?

2) what are meaningful criteria for answering that kind of question?

But you can learn to evaluate the credibility of Internet sources systematically.

You can do this evaluation by answering some basic questions.

* Who is the author? (individual, corporate, pseudonymous…)

* How qualified is the person or organization responsible for the website or e-mail communication?

* Are primary and secondary sources for claimed facts cited clearly enough?

* Is this website logically organized?

Read other Vincent Pollard's thoughts about the credibility of Internet information in his article.

Information has gone from scarce to superabundant

Special report from Te Economist on managing information.

Data, data everywhere. That brings huge new benefits, but also big headaches.

The world contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever vaster ever more rapidly. This makes it possible to do many things that previously could not be done: spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on.

Managed well, the data can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into science and hold governments to account.

But they are also creating a host of new problems. Despite the abundance of tools to capture, process and share all this information—sensors, computers, mobile phones and the like—it already exceeds the available storage space.

Moreover, ensuring data security and protecting privacy is becoming harder as the information multiplies and is shared ever more widely around the world.

There are many reasons for the information explosion. The most obvious one is technology. As the capabilities of digital devices soar and prices plummet, sensors and gadgets are digitising lots of information that was previously unavailable. And many more people have access to far more powerful tools.

See the hole report...

Top 10 mistakes managers make with email

Many of us think we use email well. But the true is we don't.

Too many of us rush, causing confusion and requiring more time to clarify misunderstandings later.

We miss chances to build relationships, motivate others, close deals and convey important information.

Usual mistakes made by managers, at all levels:

1. Using vague subject lines. "Meeting," "Update," or "Question" provide no value as subject lines.

2. Burying the news. Convey the important points first: put dates, deadlines and deliverables in the first one to three lines of the message.

3. Hiding behind the "BCC" field. At best, the 'blind copy' field is sneaky and risky.

4. Failing to clean up the mess of earlier replies/forwards. Few readers will wade through strings of previous messages.

5. Ignoring grammar and mechanics. PDAs have granted us certain sloppy flexibility, which means you'll impress readers even more when you write precisely.

6. Avoiding necessarily long emails. Longer messages sometimes work best; they can help avoid attachments' hassle and security fuss.

7. Mashing everything together into bulky, imposing, inaccessible paragraphs. Length does not discourage reading; bulk does.

8. Neglecting the human beings at the other end. Email travels between actual people, even though we don't see or hear each other directly.

9. Thinking email works best. Email is not always the best way to communicate.

10. Forgetting that email lasts forever. Most of us read, send and discard emails at lightning speeds.

Read full article on WSJ.com

Survey of executives finds a growing fear of cyberattacks

Cyberattacks are a growing threat to the critical infrastructure underlining modern society, according to a survey of 600 computing and computer-security executives in 14 nations conducted by McAfee and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Study director cites findings that 50 percent of respondents believe they have already been the target of sophisticated government hackers.

More than half of the polled executives say that their own country's laws do not adequately discourage cyberattacks, and the three most vulnerable nations are identified as the United States, China, and Russia.

Forty percent of executives are anticipating a major cybersecurity incident in their sector within the next year, while all but 20 percent project such an incident occurring within five years.

The report indicates that the growing use of Internet-based networks "creates unique and troubling vulnerabilities," although the authors stop short of urging a complete partitioning of systems and the open Internet.

Full Article (New York Times).

What can be done to compensate impersonal nature of email in business negotiations?

Realizing that the lack of rapport created through "e-negotiation" could lead to poorer outcomes for all parties, researches thought:

What if negotiators get to know a little bit about one another’s background before negotiations takes place?

To test this idea, researchers paired up students enrolled at two elite US business schools and had them negotiate a deal via email.

To a half were simply given instructions to negotiate. The other half were provided with a picture of the negotiating partner, some brief biographical information about the partner, and instructions to spend some time before start negotiation process.

When the participants were given no additional information, 29% came to an impasse and failed to agree on a deal.

Although, only 6% of more informed negotiators pair came to an impasse.

So, by taking the time to disclose something personal about yourself and your online counterpart, you will improve your negotiations outcomes.

See studies:
* Long and short routes to success in electronically mediated negotiations.
* Schmooze or lose: Social friction and lubrication in e-mail negotiations.

It’s okay to use a computer to persuade, but don’t act like one when you do

How is a process like negotiation affected by whether it takes place online or face-to-face?

The lack of personal contact between negotiating parties have the potential to act more like a roadblock than a route to successful outcomes?

In one experiment, MBA students negotiated with one another either face-to-face or by email.

When all was said and done, those who negotiated through email exchanged far less of the kind of personal information that typically helps people establish better rapport.

Past research has indicated that rapport helps negotiators overcome interpersonal friction and find cooperative agreements.

Why we don't care about information overload?

(Excerpt from article by Tom Davenport)

If information overload is such a problem, why don't we do something about it?

We could if we wanted to. How many of us bother to tune our spam filters?

How many of us turn off the little evanescent window in Outlook that tells us we have a new email?

Who signs off of social media because there's just too much junk?

Who turns off their BlackBerry or iPhone in meetings to ensure no distractions?

Nobody, that's who — or very few souls anyway.

Why? First, there is the everlasting hope of something new and exciting.

Our work and home lives can be pretty boring, and we're always hoping that something will come across the ether that will liven things up.

If I turn up the filtering on the spam filter or turn off the smartphone, I might miss out on an email promising a new job, a text message offering a new relationship, an RSS feed with a new news item, and so forth.

Every new communication offers the frisson of a possible life-changing information event, though it seldom delivers on the promise.

Read full article.

Save e-mail for low-energy periods

Boost your productivity: Do high-yield activities while your energy is highest and save e-mail for low-energy periods. It is the main idea from Marsha Egan's article published on WomenEntrepreneur.com.

We can all point to specific periods of the day when we have great energy; times when we feel sharpest or are most productive. You might feel most productive in the morning--or you might be a night owl who does your best work after dark.

Studies have verified that our bodies behave in biochemical, physiological and behavioral cycles called circadian rhythms. "Circadia," literally translated from the Latin, means "around the day."

So if our bodies work in cycles, how can we make the best of them, rather than ignore or fight them? The challenge is to harness those windows of time to do and be our best. This is where self-knowledge becomes our greatest ally. The key to managing ourselves, our work and our lives is to truly know our style and understand what works for us, our strengths and our work cycles.

Keep reading...

Social networking has crept into the enterprise with little oversight

Beyond labor productivity...

(Excerpt from article by Forbes.com)

If the multibillion-dollar e-mail security industry has been built to prevent information from seeping out through personal communication, how is social networking in the workplace still going unchecked?

After all, consumer social apps such as Facebook and Twitter provide the same information-leakage threat as unsecured, personal e-mail--possibly more, thanks to the viral impact of broadcasting news tidbits to one's network of friends in real-time.

This question of enterprise social networking security has played out repeatedly in recent months as I watch Facebook and Twitter cross the digital divide from personal to business communications tools.

For the most part, social networking has crept into the workplace with very little oversight by IT because people are gradually--and often stealthily--discovering a second purpose (business) for their personal accounts.

More...

Brief essay about personal marketing through e-mail

How e-mail affect your personal image and reputation?

So, If you want to improve your chances for professional growth, you need to be more aware of the importance of your permanent marketing as an individual.

The same marketing techniques companies use to create a commercial brand, so consumers perceive it in a positive light and prefer it, can be used by professionals when they look for a job or in their work experience:

Personal marketing through e-mail

View more documents from Juan Carlos Jiménez.

Email signature etiquette

(Fragment of article by Shelly Palmer)

Almost every email program lets you automatically add a signature to the emails you send. I'm sure you seen all kinds of interesting ones: flowery ones, very dense ones, and the horrifying and aesthetically offensive ones. What should yours look like? Here are a few simple guidelines:

First, every single email you send should have a signature. It should be plain text, so that it will look the same no matter what device or software is used to read it. When I say plain text, I mean just type (for geeks, ASCII text), no pictures, no logos, no html code, nothing but text.

Why? More than half the corporate world uses BlackBerrys to communicate. Depending on the vintage, they handle HTML over a wide range from, very poorly to marginally poorly.

The operating word here is "poorly," so why set up a signature that's guaranteed to torture a large number of corporate users. Overly ornate signatures will produce highly unexpected, and possibly unreadable, results on a BlackBerry.

This is also true for the body copy of the email. Tabs, bullets, any kind of alignment is all thrown out the window and HTML looks like jumbled computer code when it is displayed as text.

Another, and possibly more important, reason to use plain text is the wide range of spam filters that are currently deployed. Many of these filters look at the ratio of text to graphics as a test.

If you're email is already in HTML format, a logo or a combination of logo and your picture may kick you email into the corporate trash.

Like I said, signatures should be simple, complete and be in plain text.

Read full article

Is Twitter the new face of spam?

(Excerpt from article on AwarenessNetworks.com)

With Twitter being the hottest online space at the moment, marketers are trying to crack the code on getting to twitter users.

Lets face it, Twitter is broke, and in the exact same state email was at in the early days. Why not try to exploit it.

We tolerate a flow of junk because its new and cool. We can easily point to a relevant tweet to justify our obsession.

Spammers see an opportunity too and are mirroring genuine behavior. I see a number of tactics in use.

Don't be offended if you personally use these tactics for your own personal tweeting. Spammers want to look like you.

However, ask yourself if you use these tactics because you are trying to get the most out of the conversation, or are you personally trying to attract followers? You may be a spammer.

Read full article...

Like it or not, email is the nerve system of modern business

Compared to the phone, it is asynchronous and provides a written record to the sender and recipient for follow-up action or later reference. In this respect, it is much more useful than instant messaging or social networks.

It can be frivolous or deadly serious – it’s possible to be fired via an email, but also due to an email. Many vital decisions are made by email exchange, and the implication of our usage findings is that these may be made on the move, on tiny screens, and when otherwise off-duty.

Whether within their own office or between organizations separated by thousands of miles and many time zones, the sender will assume that all sent emails are received, and that they are read.

They will frequently expect a response within hours, let alone days. All this despite the ease of misaddressing, the hit-or-miss nature of mobile synchronization, the spam filters, the reply-to-all clutter, and the mass deletions required to stand any chance of keeping one’s inbox usable.

For many information workers, the email client is their primary business application. They spend many hours of the office day reading, responding and collaborating via emails.

The email history created by these responses and interactions is so poorly maintained, and the ability of knowledge workers to search for important content within current and past emails – their own and those of their colleagues – is so poor.

In a large organization, several millions of emails are handled each day. Most are of no lasting consequence, but each day there will be a significant number of important emails involving the organization in obligations, agreements, contracts, regulations and discussions, all of which might be of legal significance.

In this report of AIIM we discuss how these important records are being dealt with, what policies are in place, how aware staff are of the issues, and which technologies are in use.

Association for Information and Image Management, AIIM

AIIM is the community that provides education, research, and best practices to help organizations find, control, and optimize their information.

For over 60 years, AIIM has been the leading non-profit organization focused on helping users to understand the challenges associated with managing documents, content, records, and business processes.

AIIM is also known as the enterprise content management (ECM) association.

AIIM is international in scope, independent, and implementation-focused. As the industry's intermediary, AIIM represents the entire industry - including users, suppliers, and the channel.

As a neutral and unbiased source of information, AIIM serves the needs of its members and the industry through the following activities:

* Provides events and information services that help users specify, select, and deploy ECM solutions to solve organizational problems.

* Provides an educational roadmap for the industry.

* Creates opportunities that allow users, suppliers, consultants, and the channel to engage and connect with one another - through chapters, networking groups, programs, partnerships, and the Web.

* Acts as the voice of the ECM industry in key standards organizations, with the media, and with government decision-makers.

Resources about email managment on AIIM website.

Social media drives increased email use

Despite an initial hypothesis that increased time on social networks might be taking Americans away from their email, a Nielsen research analysis found that the heaviest social media users actually use email more, perhaps because of the steady stream of messages that social networks dump into participants’ inboxes.

Nielsen then examined the amount of time that each group spent on email in the year before the study, and subtracted the email consumption of those who do not use social media from those who do in order to account for possible external forces.

Study found that social media use appears to makes people consume email more, not less, particularly for the heaviest social media users.

In other words, findings make sense because social media sites such as Facebook send numerous and periodic status-update and notification messages to social media users’ email addresses.

See chart on MarketingCharts.com.

Information overload affects us all

(From Guy Kawasaki's article on Open Forum)

Kem Meyer is the communications director at Granger Community Church. Her book, Less Clutter. Less Noise, helps churches, businesses, schools and not-for-profits find ways to get the word out and, simply, do better. In this guest post, she explains how to simplify your marketing.

Information overload occurs when we receive more information than our brain can process. Even if it’s good information, too much of a good thing isn’t good anymore. Whether you’re an information addict or Zen advocate, information overload affects us all.

If you’d like to contribute something of real value that improves quality of life, it’s as simple as dialing back your own volume...

Life is overwhelming enough as it is. Your business, church, school, or social cause shouldn’t be piling on more and adding to the confusion. Look at your own emails, mailings, brochures, web site, and identify where you need to turn down your volume. It’s the right thing to do for everyone.

Here are five ways you should be looking to help reduce the stress for your customers...

Ways information overload may be causing you harm

Increased stress, impaired cognition, information addiction...

Most of us already know from experience that the abundance of information we enjoy today comes at a price.

Less apparent is the tremendous hidden cost information owerload imposes on the organization as a whole. But, incidentally, you can calculate the costs involved in the individual management of e-mail.

The possible link between information overload and suicides among employees at France Telecom may be spurious.

Research indicates that information overload can have a negative effect on such activities as organizational decision making, innovation, and productivity.

Time lost to handling unnecessary e-mail and recovering from information interruptions cost Intel nearly $1 billion a year.

Surprisingly few companies even acknowledge the problem, much less make any attempt to do something about it.

Read interesting article by Paul Hemp, on Harvard Business Review Editors' Blog.

But organizations could save a lot of time and money facing internal spam messages, by training their workers to approach written communication dynamic integrally.

If professionals learn when e-mail is better than others communication channels, why, and how to use it in those cases, they can reduce many of the inefficient information flow present today at work.

Yes, I know that it's only part of the challenge. But the amount of productivity related on internal spam is significative. An this is one of the contributions I want to do with my book Email at the workplace.