E-Biz Booster Blog

It’s time to adjust the clocks in Europe again.

Tonight (or tomorrow morning if you will) clocks will be advanced from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. when daylight-saving-time begins in Europe this spring.

That means we (including me) lose one hour that we don’t get back until next fall when daylight-savings-time in Europe will end on Sunday, October 31, 2010. (Of course we will get it back without interest being paid. Maybe we’ll save a bit on the electric bill, but I’m not really sure about that.)

Attention to you folks in the USA and Canada: The time difference to Europe will get back to normal again.

Here are some examples to demonstrate the ‘usual time differences’ between USA, Canada and Europe.

America	Europe	Time Difference [hours]
New York	London	5
	Berlin	6
Chicago	London	6
	Berlin	7
Denver	London	7
	Berlin	8
Los Angeles	London	8
	Berlin	9
Example: 10 a.m. in Denver is 6 p.m. in Berlin

You’ll find additional information and tools at timeanddate.com (↑).

• Daylight Saving Time–first half of 2010 (↑)
• Daylight Saving Time–second half of 2010 (↑)
  
  
• Overview over start and end times for 2010 (↑)

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Browsing tip: Links designated with (↑) will open in a new browser window.

I think the next transition is on April 4th, when daylight-saving-time ends this year in Australia.

Kind of confusing, isn’t it.

Have a ‘short’ night sleep
(if you are in Europe.)

Yours
John W. Furst

Daylight savings time has started in the USA (↑) today.

In Europe it will begin in two weeks, and it will end in Australia in three weeks.

Especially if you are in Europe you could easily miss online events in the USA during the next two weeks.

Be aware of those time changes when planning or attending online events.

Here is why.

For example, when it is 1pm in New York it is usually 6pm in London. Between March 14 and March 27, 2010, however, it will be 5pm in London, only 4 hours later.

Then on March 28 daylight savings time will rule on both continents and time difference will be the usual 5 hours till the clocks will be reset in fall of 2010, again.

Life could be easier if daylight savings time were changed on the same weekends all over the world, but that's not the case.

To make things worse, Hawaii (and many other regions in the world) don't observe daylight savings time at all. On top of that Australia and New Zealand are on the southern hemisphere. While we start daylight savings time in the North, Australia will end it on April 4, 2010.

Tip: TimeAndDate.com (↑) offers detailed information and tools. Like a timezone converter, etc., …

Personally I am adding timezone information to event details. Don't leave room for assumptions. Don't assume your readers are educated about timezones, it's your job to communicate in a way they understand easily.

Here is an example for unambiguous event information.

Webinar starts on Friday, March 12, 2010 at 3:30 p.m. EST (UTC-05) as in New York, USA

or

Teleclass starts on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 3:30 p.m. EDT (UTC-04) as in New York, USA.

Note: EST is Eastern Standard Time and EDT is Eastern Daylight Savings Time.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Especially US marketers seem to be unaware of — or lazy about — timezone issues that go beyond Eastern versus Pacific time. Check out my previous post on this subject: Email Marketing And Troubles With Timezones.

I have the feeling that I will write another post very soon. Therefore, I keep this one extra short.

How many emails do you receive each day?

Let’s cut out spam and probably transactional emails like New Subscriber, New Comment, …

I’ll usually get up to 100 a day. However, there are still individual emails that I am looking forward to with great anticipation.

Last Sunday was such a day.

I got up knowing I should receive an important email. But nothing. Not at 9am, not at 10am, 11am, … It simply didn’t find its way into my inbox or the spam folder. It actually has not been sent before Monday as I learned later.

As insignificant as this episode might be, it taught me and other marketers with whom I have discussed this an important lesson.

I really felt disappointed; Actually already had made plans to deal with the subject matter. (I know. It was Sunday. So what.)

As I see now, strangely enough, it did not come to my mind to simply grab the phone, or write an email to the source saying,

“What’s up? Weren’t you supposed to send me something?”

Sure that would have been a smart thing to do. Probably I am not that smart. But I bet your customers or members of your email list aren’t that smart either. Let me rephrase that: Just do not assume that they are that smart or even care.

Here Comes The Lesson

That’s actually a dream come true for anybody who is going through the effort of building a permission based email list when your members can’t wait to get your next message.
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