This week, we shared an article by Scott Gerber over at business.com: “9 Most Effective Apps for Internal Communication“. Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), and he polled its members to find exciting solutions to team communications.
I read the list and was surprised not by what I found, but what I didn’t find: almost any mention of email.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Email has long been the workhorse of electronic communications—saddled with all of the jobs that no one else wants to do.
When a fancy new product comes along that promises real-time communication (plus GIFS! And integrated voice! And more GIFS!), it’s easy to get excited about. But email is just…well, email.
Email: Free to be me
Timyo aims to change that. We think that precisely because there are now great team apps like Slack and HipChat, the time is ripe to get excited about email again.
Today, email isn’t forced to be a one-size-fits-all communication tool. That means that we can focus on creating email that excels at what email does best: allow for asynchronous communication with more substantive or formal content.
It means that we can take advantage of email’s native capabilities and play to those strengths. Rather than being the best all-around player—a great sixth man—email can be the All-Star pitcher or the MVP goalie: a teammate whose specific skill set is crucial to the team’s success.
Play the whole team
A crucial job of any good manager or coach is knowing who to play when. It’s the same when managing your own team’s communications. And just as a coach won’t use the same player for every play, your team shouldn’t use the same communication tool for every task.
When you want real-time communications or long ongoing discussion threads, email probably isn’t the call. But when you want to be able to go in depth (like discussing the overview of a big project) or allow for more formality (reaching out with your team to a new client), email is great for that.
And most importantly, because it’s asynchronous, email allows you and your team to communicate when it makes the most sense for each of you individually.
Making the good stuff even better
Timyo takes email’s strengths and makes them stronger. By allowing you to set clear expectations about when and what sort of response you are looking for, Timyo takes the guesswork out of email. And Timyo plays up the advantage of asynchronicity by allowing you to manage your emails across time.
We are excited that Timyo is coming into the game just as we are starting to see so many great tools for team communications. We are ready for email to do what it does best.
Put us in, coach. We’re ready to play.
