E-Mail 101

Does your organization have in effect an Intranet? If so, do you take the appropriate measures to ensure that the word about new information is distributed to your organizational members?

Believe it or not, many organizations haven't learned to communicate. E-mail is probably the most cost-effective way to communicate with your end-users. But first, lets have a lesson from Prof. Spivak's Marketing 099 class.

The Internet has four methodologies for communicating. Push, Pull, Hybrid and a combination of both these techniques.

Pull:Your Web site is an example of a Pull technology. If a user doesn't explicitly go to the Web site and pull (download) the information, they will never see it. This is why we advertise on the Internet.

Push: E-mail is an example of Push. You send the e-mail to the intended recipient, and they receive (download) the information. Spam notwithstanding, your reader hopefully has the full content.Hybrid: HTML e-mail is an example of the Hybrid technology available today. It provides both the push of e-mail, and the pull of a web page.

Combination: Using plain text e-mail, and hyperlinks to Web pages, you can have your message made available to any user, on any platform, from broadband to wireless.

By using properly formatted plain-text e-mails, and mailing list software, your organization can provide your end-user with snippets of information, and a link to the full-blown details.

This solution solves some of the quandaries of a varied end-user population; slow access, limited attention span, and limited time. A well written message will drive your end-users to the information you need them to read.

As the old Alka Seltzer commercial famous phrase said "Try it, you'll like it!"