Email For Business Handbook
- — 06 January, 2000 16:47
While Australia adopts e-business with all the poise of journalists hearing the words "free beer", there is no question that most companies are still coming to terms with all the implications of new technology. Email for Business starts poorly, with an almost incomprehensible foreword by Richard Alston, but then gets down to the nitty gritty of its subject while staying briskly focused. There is no time wasting here; the authors all know that e-mail is a powerful business tool when used efficiently and show precisely how to gain maximum benefit from direct mail while staying both honest and on the good side of your customers and staff.
For readers who get stroppy when simply seeing the words "direct marketing", the book explains exactly what spam is and why it will never work. The book recommends a more effective business model revolving around "opt in" schemes that develop goodwill towards your business as opposed to the simple hatred and complaints that spamming generates.
Closer to home, the book delivers solid, commonsense advice on how your business can develop an internal e-mail policy that maximises individual freedom while inspiring employees to use the Internet constructively rather than as a tool to avoid work or alienate their co-workers. While the specifics are left to your system administrator, the broad issues of how to set up a workable system are explained with enough clarity to enable even the most computer-challenged CEO to communicate on common ground with the technical staff.
If you use e-mail for business at all, you should examine a copy of this book - because if you read it, I guarantee you'll end up making more sense than that foreword.
