Email strategy to clear your head
August 12, 2010
Before the strategy
Before I had a strategy, I probably had the setup you have:
- One business card with all my details: name, office phone & fax, postal address, email address and mobile number.
- One email address for everyone. Sounds simple.
The problem
When you network regularly with people who assumed that a business meant permission to receive their newsletter, you can start to get a lot of emails. Some do ask for permission, you say yes, because it is polite, but not always because it is wanted.
You set up rules in Outlook, but still constantly see there is all these unread newsletters. It makes you feel behind. You end up deleting without reading because you get so behind. That doesn’t benefit either party.
Some questions for you
How many hours do you spend reading emails every day?
More importantly, how much time do you spend thinking about the pile of emails?
What does your inbox do to your mood?
The strategy
Two business cards:
(1) The same one as above that you give to qualified opportunities and clients
(2) A networking card – with no mobile and a general email address that is collected daily by someone on your team
Set up several email addresses with different purposes
Primary business: Work emails related to opportunities and projects that I collect and they are received into a CRM where they almost 100% are attached to opportunities or projects
General business: Networking card address and used on forms that require an address. If someone emails me personally at this address, it is forwarded to me and I can action.
Business mail: Newsletters and communications from groups I’m a member
Online: Online networking emails
Personal: Friends and family
The outcome
I can completely segment my time by which email address I am looking at.
It works well when busy and need to focus without too many distractions.
It gives me a clearer head.
Then if I have some time, I can look at the Outlook emails and register for networking events I want to go to and catch up on the newsletters.
How was the weekend? – Winter 2010
June 29, 2010
Towards the end of last year, via our ActionMap tool, we asked ‘how was your weekend?’ and then posted the results. We wondered last time around what the ActionMap would look like in six months. So we asked again, at the beginning of last week, to see if things had changed.
This Tribal Tool-Kit ActionMap survey “How was the weekend?” asked:
1. On Friday, we look towards the next two days with certain expectations. How important were these aspects for you on Friday?
2. Now the weekend is over, how satisfied are you with the level of achievement with these aspects?
Below are the aspects and the numbers for the ActionMap key:
1. Socialising
2. Exercise
3. Catch up on home to-do list
4. EOFY (End of Financial Year) preparation (Dec 2009 – Christmas preparations)
5. Catch up on work to-do list
6. Relaxing
Here is what our ActionMap was able to deduce:
This shows us that both ’socialising’ and ‘relaxing’ were pretty important for most people and that most people were pretty satisfied with each of them by the end of the weekend.
It also shows us that anything to do with work and the end of the financial year weren’t really given too much importance for the weekend and delivered very little satisfaction.
When it comes to ‘exercise’, it seems that this was of moderate importance yet delivered low on satisfaction. Given that it was perceived as being important though, it could do with some attention (for those who participated in the survey at least). Catching up on work at home was also considered of moderate to high importance but also delivered little in terms of satisfaction. Again, it seems that those who completed the survey might want to give a little more focus to this aspect of their weekend.
So how does this compare to our December ActionMap?
What we did in December was almost identical except, where we asked this year about the End of Financial Year preparations, we asked about Christmas preparations. Below are the results from December 2010:
The first thing of note is that the ’spectrum’ of importance this time around is greater than last time. In summer, it seemed that everything had a reasonable to high level of importance (ranging from a mean score of 3.3 to 5). This time around importance scores range from 1.6 through to 6.0. Satisfaction scores are almost identical to December 2009, ranging from both 3.4 and 3.5 to 5.6.
It seems that ‘work’ and ‘obligatory’ activities (such as preparing for the end of financial year or Christmas) continue to be low priorities. This time around, exercise has become more important but maintains a similar level of satisfaction. This may suggest that most (if not all respondents) came from somewhere in wintery Australia and are less active as a result of the weather – but wish they weren’t.
Work around the house is slightly less important but still derives the same amount of satisfaction as December 2009.
Again ‘relaxing’ and ’socialising’ derive the most satisfaction for our participants. However, it seems that our current respondents were somehow privy to the December results. Improvements have been made to the level of satisfaction gained from ‘relaxation’ and the benefits of ’socialising’ appear to have been imparted – bravo new participants!
Though this ActionMap is just a bit of fun, it does demonstrate how a short, simple survey administered amongst your tribe can help you get some answers about your brand’s successes. A short, smart survey can also give you some indications as to where you should focus your attention to help bring your brand into line with where you would like it to be. If you would like to know more about how the ActionMap or any other part of Tribal Tool-Kit can help you and/or your business, please feel free to contact Tribe Research via email (ask@triberesearch.com.au) or by phone (+61 2 8096 2546).
…And with a new week freshly upon us and another weekend fast approaching, perhaps insights we have gained here will help to guide you towards a weekend where you get as much satisfaction as you can from doing all the important stuff (i.e. socialising and relaxing!)
Until next time…
Happy Exploring!
We need a new Mapper
May 31, 2010
Tribe Research is a team of people that explore, uncover and drive change. We go on expeditions.
But, we need a Mapper!
Mappers can do a range of things to support other members of the team:
- Assist researchers by doing
- data entry of paper based surveys
- telephone interviews for very short surveys
- put data from our statistics software into graphs and reports
- finalise report formatting
- Book-keeping
- manage team general expenses
- MYOB data entry
- prepare BAS and superannuation reports
- Administration
- manage our general email accounts
- generate regular reports from CRM
- maintain stationery & other office supplies
- manage incoming and outgoing post
We’re thinking that this would be a part-time role, preferably 9:30-2:30 each day (so 1/2 time). The number of days is flexible depending on your interests, skills, and other commitments.
Tribe Research is a quantitative market and social research supplier. We work with a range of SMEs, non-profit, and government organisations.
We don’t want your CV, but would love to see one page about why you want to work at Tribe Research.
- What 3 things make you excited?
- What 3 things irritate you?
- What will you bring to the team by joining us?
- What do you want to learn while at Tribe Research?
Email your one page to work@triberesearch.com.au
Federal Election Priorities ActionMap
April 28, 2010
One of the things I like about priority lists – they fit wonderfully into an ActionMap survey.
A few weeks ago a list of 10 things the next Federal Election should be about and will be about was posted by Glebe2037. We’re not saying we agree or disagree with his list, but thought that a selection of the points would be interesting in an ActionMap.
An ActionMap survey asks participants to rate a list of items, on a scale of 1 (low) to 7 (high) in terms of importance and satisfaction. It then maps the actions when the survey is closed.
Importance question: Glebe2037 posted a list of things the next Australian Federal Election should be about & what it will be about. I thought it would be interesting to see how important you feel these things are:
Satisfaction question: How satisfied are you with the performance of the Australian Government in their current term? After you finish the survey you will be redirected to Glebe2037’s post. We’ll blog the results soon.
The aspects
- Environment & Sustainable Development
- Paid Parental Leave
- Cost of Living & Interest Rates
- Taxation & Budget Deficits/Surpluses
- Mental Illness & Homelessness
- Agricultural Practices & Land Management
- Protecting Our Borders
- Change at a pace that will not scare people
- Public Funding of Medical & Scientific Research
The ActionMap: Use the list above for the description of the numbers in the ActionMap below.
There were 41 people who completed the survey. It was completely anonymous and promoted through social media and forums interested in the topic. So, we’re not saying that it’s a representative sample.
According to the participants, the Federal Government needs to improve: Environment & Sustainable Development, Mental Illness & Homelessness, and Agricultural Practices & Land Management.
Taxation & Budget Deficits/Surpluses is an area they’re performing best and it’s of high importance, which is why it’s on the edge of ‘Send to Marketing’. Similarly Cost of Living & Interest Rates is also on the edge of ‘Send to Marketing’ as it had higher importance than Taxation & Budget Deficits/Surpluses but they weren’t as satisfied.
The other consideration in interpreting an ActionMap is the scale. These are the numbers in the corners of the ActionMap. While the importance stretches almost all the scale, the satisfaction ratings were all below the mid-point of a 1-7 scale, 4.
The ActionMap is one of the tools in Tribal Tool-Kit.
We’d love to hear your thoughts.
Four ways to grow your tribe
April 15, 2010
Four essential ways for growing your tribe:
- Research is an ongoing expedition, not a static project. It’s the best way you can drive change in your organisation. Read more about the feedback cycle in action.
- You need to involve everyone in your organisation when you want to get feedback. They all have a perspective they’re sharing inside and outside of the organisation and shaping other people’s views.
- You need to find out the words that people use to describe your organisation so you can see if they are the same words you use. If they aren’t the same, then people are getting mixed messages. You can do this easily with a CloudMaker mini survey and then make a word cloud.
- Find people who can give you a different perspectives and challenge your views.
Kate Tribe had a conversation with Hugh Liney for the Telstra Enterprise Podcast Series that covered these points. You can listen to the Podcast on their website.