Contacts and channels
Your contact book and how notices reach them: email, SMS and WhatsApp.
- Reaching the right personStart hereThe document does not arrive because you are asking someone who does not have it. How to find who does.
- What time to sendStart hereThe same message answered or ignored depending on when it lands, and the hours to avoid.
- When the contact has no emailStart hereSome people work from a phone alone, and it is not a rare exception: in some trades it is the majority.
- When an auto-reply comes backStart here«I am away until the 30th» looks like an obstacle and is the opposite: the one time they tell you who to ask.
- What a contact isStart hereThe record of someone outside, and why it pays to keep it right.
- Keeping contacts up to dateGoing furtherA wrong contact costs two weeks, and it was almost always knowable in advance.
- When the same contact is both client and supplierGoing furtherOne record or two, and what breaks if you choose wrong.
- When the contact person changesGoing furtherThe silent cause of half the cases that stall.
- When an email does not arriveGoing further"I never got anything" is nearly always one of four things, and only one is the email's fault.
- Writing to someone who does not know youGoing furtherThe first message to a third party decides whether they reply or take it for a scam.
- Writing to a public authorityGoing furtherWhat differs from writing to a company, and what to keep either way.
- Asking several people for the same thingGoing furtherSending it to three just in case feels safer and usually means none of them replies.
- When someone asks you to stop writingGoing furtherTelling apart what you can stop sending from what must still be communicated, and through which channel.
- When someone replies and it does not registerGoing furtherThey answered, and for you they are still silent. It is nearly always one of three things, all fixable.
- Having the system phone peopleGoing furtherFor people who read no email and answer no messages, but do pick up the phone.
- Writing a message people understandGoing furtherWhat decides whether a third party acts today or leaves it forever.
- Bringing in the contacts you already haveGoing furtherStart from the list you already have, without typing anyone in.
- Which channel for which messageGoing furtherEmail, SMS or WhatsApp: which arrives, which annoys, and which costs.
- Writing to third parties in their languageAdvancedWhat actually changes when the supplier does not speak your language.
- Channels: email, SMS and WhatsAppHow notices arrive, why they end up in spam and how to raise response rates.