Do Better

9 Jan 2011

Fred Productivity Comments Off

When teams are looking for improvements they normally look for ways to do more with the same resources (time, money, people, tools, etc).

However, most of the time what the team should actually focus on is to do better, not to do more.

It is much more difficult to do better than do more. To do better you need to raise your own standards, to challenge yourself, to change how you do things.

But then again, if it was easy everyone would do it. So doing better gives you a great advantage over others who just do more.

Email Newsletters

7 Jan 2011

Fred Other important stuff Comments Off

Do you send out a regular newsletter? It is a great way to keep in touch with your customers, and to subtly remind them about your company.

If you expect to have more than a hundred subscribers you should definitely use a reputable company for your email newsletter. Otherwise there is a great risk that your server is blacklisted, if it suddenly starts sending out a large amount of emails.

Here are the five most important things to look for when choosing newsletter company:

  1. Reports on how many people have opened your email and which links they clicked
  2. Automatic compliance with Data Protection Act (including easy unsubscribe, etc)
  3. The company should have a good relationship with Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, and other big email domains
  4. Automatic forms where customers can sign up for your newsletter
  5. Great templates that work in all email programs (Outlook 2007 is especially tricky)

Here are a few great email marketing tools to try:

  1. CampaignMonitor
  2. VerticalResponse
  3. Newsweaver

Mindmeister – Helps Focus your Mind

6 Jan 2011

Fred Productivity Comments Off

Mindmeister logoHave you heard of mind-mapping?

It is a great tool for focusing your mind, especially if your mind is as muddled and unfocused as mine.

It helps you explore problems and ideas, and add some structure to your thinking.

Personally I use Mindmeister. It is really handy as the mind-maps are stored online, and they have a nice app for the iPad. But there are other great tools out there, such as Freemind, which is free.

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