Email me back when you get this?

Email is a great team communication tool, or at least I used to think so. I send out two or three a week during the season and on important ones I add “Please email me back when you get this”. I keep a paper list next to my computer to check off who gets back to me. I keep checking my email and marking off players from my list or lists. After a day or two or as the deadline approaches, I look up the numbers and call those players that have not gotten back to me. I find out that they did get the message and they are sorry they didn’t reply as requested and we have a nice chat. I still have seven more calls to make.

One of the more tedious tasks facing a team coach is communicating information such as meetings, schedule changes, field changes, etc. The usual way to notify your team of a short-term change, such as a game cancellation, is to call everyone. Hopefully you are not traveling and you have all of the various phone numbers of all your players. Some of the lucky coaches have a team manager that takes care of this, but it only moves the burden, it does not eliminate it. With the wide use of the Internet, email or email lists have become the dominant method of team communication. Email makes sending information very easy, but it does not let the sender know if the information has been received and it often cannot be used for short-term time critical messages.

“I cannot tell you how much time using this service has saved me.  I coach year round soccer and spring baseball and use the service extensively for both.  Rather than spending an hour or so calling everyone, I can log on to Activity Alert and send an E-mail in just a few minutes.  I can then check back at anytime and see that everyone has received my notices.” – Steve, Trebol Soccer Club

Over the past year, my friend Gene and I have been testing an Internet based service called ActivityAlert (www.activityalert.com). It is a web service focused on team communication (email and telephone) that also includes calendar, attendance, and roster tools. Gene is a team manager in Massachusetts and I am a coach here in Colorado, we tested the service in the Spring and Fall of 2004. The spring test was good, but there were a couple of kinks that were identified and corrected. The fall test was excellent and ActivityAlert performed above expectations.

“I found ActivityAlert very easy to use, it only took about five minutes to set up my team, and it saved me hours throughout the season. Not only did I communicate more effectively with my players and parents, they liked ActivityAlert and communicated more with Me. “ – Gene, Boston Bulldogs

The key to ActivityAlert is that every time I send notifications whether by email or phone, it tracks every player that receives it. No more “Please email me back when you get this” or messages on an answering machine or calls to home, work and cell phone. I can log on at any time and view a report that shows me who accessed or listened to my message. It even tabulates yes or no answers to a question that I asked. There was a thunderstorm at four in the afternoon and I cancelled a five o’clock practice with one phone call using the automated call tree. I logged in at 4:20 and had confirmation that the entire team had received the message.

One key feature of ActivityAlert is its privacy. It will only share your address and contact information with other players and coaches on your team. Also, you can enter private phone numbers and email addresses that ActivityAlert will use to contact you; it will not share them with anyone. Another is if your family has more than one activity using the service, it presents a calendar that shows all scheduled events and automatically identifies any conflicts between the schedules.

Like many Internet based services, ActivityAlert has a free section that includes team creation, email notifications with tracking, online calendar and roster management. You only pay for the calling capability, if you use it.

So if you no longer want to keep those bits of paper keeping track of who got your message and reduce the time you spend on the phone, try using Activity Alert and see how much time you save.