The JD Approach Newsletter
January 2009
Dear [FIRSTNAME],
Our first two events for our new education project take place on 27th February and 10th March. If you haven't joined us in Second Life yet and would like to find out more about the work we are doing with 3D collaboration platforms, online virtual business networking and encouraging Sheffield schoolgirls in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects please email secondlife@jdapproach.co.uk to find out more.
The JD Approach newsletter now has over 850 subscribers. If you know someone who might like to receive this newsletter please forward it on and ask them to subscribe at our website; www.jdapproach.co.uk
The JD Approach Team
Website of The Month
The new version of JD Message is finally here, create and send professional HTML messages, manage contacts and campaign lists easily and maintain data protection levels. Now with easy PayPal subscription options.
If you are a Marketing, PR or Graphic Design agency you might like your own 'white label' branded version of JD Message to offer to your customers. We offer excellent discounts on bulk message orders and with this system you can either decide the mark-up price per message to charge to your own customers or even just pay a one off fee for unlimited messages and then use this system to offer e-mail marketing campaigns as an added value service to your customers.
Email jdmessage@jdapproach.co.uk to find out more.
Useful Tip
Drawing Lines in Word
You can create a line across the page of your Microsoft Office Word document or Microsoft Office Outlook e-mail message by using just a few keystrokes.
• To create a normal line, type three consecutive hyphens, and then press ENTER.
• To create a bold line, type three underscores, and then press ENTER.
• To create a double line, type three equal signs, and then press ENTER.
Dates for Your Diary
Excel 2003 Basics
An excellent, easy paced
introduction to the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet package.
5 Star Computer Training Suite, G4, Carlisle Street, Sheffield.
Wednesday 4th February
9.30am till 4pm,
Normally £200 plus VAT
Only £160 plus VAT for JD Approach newsletter readers.
Click Here to Book
OOO
Word 2003 Intermediate
Brush up on your word processing skills, learn new techniques and tricks to help you work more efficiently.
5 Star Computer Training Suite, G4, Carlisle Street, Sheffield.
Wednesday 11th February
9.30am till 4pm,
Normally £200 plus VAT
Only £160 plus VAT for JD Approach newsletter readers.
Click Here to Book
OOO
Women In Business
Speed Networking
The first event of the year for Barnsley and Rotherham Chamber's WiB group will be a fun and eventful speed networking session with lunch.
Brooklands Hotel, Barnsley
Wednesday 18th March
11.15am
£15 for BR Chamber Members
£30 for None Members
Click Here to Book
OOO
Thank you for reading this newsletter, it was produced using our online e-marketing tool for small businesses, if you would like to do the same for your business, please click the link below
www.jdmessage.com
[TRACKER]
JD Approach at The House of Commons
The National Skills Forum has recently produced a report entitled 'Closing the Gender Skills Gap'.
The report contains twenty five policy recommendations for government as well as case studies of employers who operate best practice and women who have been able to learn new skills. JD Approach Directors Deborah Adshead and Jessica Zeun are proud to feature as one of these case studies. We have been invited by Gordon Marsden MP to attend a reception at the House of Commons to celebrate the launch of this report.
The report considers ways to close the gender skills gap by removing barriers faced by women who wish to develop their skills. Increasing the range and level of women’s skills will raise national productivity and ensure that the UK remains competitive in an increasingly knowledge-based and globalised economy. It will also reduce the pay and opportunity gap between men and women.
The report focuses on three areas:
- increasing the number of women with the skills to work in science, engineering and technology
- improving work-life balance and making it easier for women who wish to combine family life with work and ongoing skills development
- ensuring that the adult education and training system fully engages women.
We have a keen interest in these issues due to our experiences as women in the technology sector and the issues we have faced throughout our careers. JD Approach does lots of work with several organisations to assist other women in the technology sector and we are committed to the CEO Charter of the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology. http://www.ukrc4setwomen.org/html/employers/ceo-charter/
The report was kindly sponsored by Investors in People, Ufi, the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT), the City and Guilds Centre for Skills Development and the Institute of Legal Executives (ILEX).
10 Top Tips
Working Smarter and Sharing Information
It is becoming more and more important for organisations to share information between individuals and to collaborate and communicate effectively. There are lots of tools and different technologies available today which allow us to do this in lots of different ways.
In the current climate it is even more important to make the most of the technology that is already available to you in order to work more efficiently and be more productive with the hours and budget that you do have. We have put together our top ten list of ways for small businesses to use technology to communicate and share information more effectively.
- Use Google Docs to share information with others online or to transfer between the office PC and home, instead of using a memory stick.
- Invite others to meetings directly from Outlook. The response will automatically be added to Outlook. Publish your free time slots from Outlook when others want to meet with you.
- Use Track Changes in Word when you send documents to others for editing. When they send the original document back you can see the changes made and choose to accept or reject them as appropriate.
- Use one master template and use Paste Special to create dynamic links in other documents and spreadsheets, which automatically update when the source is updated and which automatically update the source data with changes you make in your local copy.
- Create spreadsheets to track purchases, leads, quotes, orders, invoices and payments. Calculate the time take between each stage of the sales process then create graphs and charts of the results.
- Organise your files by saving them to different folders. Give each file a useful name and a date so that you can easily find them again.
- Keep a spreadsheet to record all your user logins and passwords. Remember to password protect the document but make sure that this is the one password that you don’t forget and certainly never divulge it to a second party.
- Set up rules to manage what happens to your emails, for example move them to a different folder, automate a response, highlight a message in a different colour or automatically forward messages with key words in the subject or from a particular person to someone else.
- Maintain an online calendar and contacts list if you want to share it with others. Some online solutions also allow you to view the information in Outlook. You would still need to edit items online.
- Use RSS feeds to stay up to date with information from your favourite websites if they are offered. This saves you having to check on the website to see the latest changes.
Easy and Effective Email Marketing
In the current economic climate, marketing is one area where many businesses might look to cut back on costs. Printed newsletters and flyers can be expensive to create and distribute and customers are increasingly ignoring advertising material that they receive through the post.
An email newsletter can be a cost effective way to keep in touch with your existing customers and attract new ones. You can make it even more effective by knowing which of your recipients actually opened and read your message, which links they clicked on and if they forwarded it on.
Having information about how effective your email has been can help you to specifically target future campaigns. For example you could send a follow up email to everyone who clicked on a link to a particular product or service, since if they clicked the link they are more likely to be interested in the first place.
The latest version of JD Message has just launched and it is now even easier to create, send and monitor professional HTML emails.
There is a new control panel making templates and messages easy to control and manage. Contacts can still be viewed all together or by campaign and you can see individual activity statistics to see how many messages a contact has opened from each campaign.
Statistics can also be viewed by message or by campaign and it is really easy to see your list of campaign members and unsubscribers.
There are many ways to send your newsletters and marketing messages but none offer the simplicity, support and cost-effectiveness of JD Message.
Prices start from only £10 per month for 500 emails and the more you send the cheaper it gets per email.