you are super busy or you are down to your last email before heading home. Maybe it’s first thing in the morning, you have a full in box to read and handle, all before your meeting starts in 10 minutes. It’s easy to be in a rush and dismiss the little things, however…
…have you ever thought how your email looked from a receiver’s viewpoint? Of course you have, every day, haven’t you? It is so easy in our fast-paced lives to let the little things go.
When you receive a poorly formatted email and you don’t know where each paragraph starts or finishes -- the thoughts are scattered and jumbled -- here’s the reader’s self chatter in action: “What the heck, it’ll take me hours to decipher this. I don’t have time for this. Can’t X be respectful? I’ll just pretend I didn’t get it and maybe their follow-up email will be clearer.” Click and delete. Of course, you have never done this – chuckle.
By chance, your next email receiver is nicer and doesn’t delete and pretend. They just move onto the next email and leave yours for the “someday in the future” stack. And maybe it will or will not ever be answered. Their response may even miss your point entirely or only provide feedback to half of the items that need addressing.
If you have difficulty getting quick responses or any response at all, the receiver could be sending you a silent message. They could feel that you are wasting their time or do want to educate you on common email courtesies.
Recently, after receiving ten emails in one day from separate independent professionals, with their personal pronouns “i’s” in lower case besides other items. I asked them to enlighten me about their lax protocols. I received a wave of negative responses. In order to keep this a family-available article, here are a few responses cleaned up: “i don’t have time, too many emails.” A few others added, “i do it to everyone.” I particularly loved the “to” in the last two emails – I do it “to” everyone.
A human resource director client shared with me that every day she deletes ten or twelve applications, about 12% of the total number she receives daily, that omit common email courtesies. A majority come from individuals with higher degrees. I chuckled at the irony. She didn’t and just heavily sighed. She found it even more serious on the number of emails she received from recruiters that also lacked these simple courtesies.
“Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff” is a book I read a few years ago if I recall correctly. Normally I wouldn’t care much about the small stuff either. However, coherent communication, whether verbal or written, still represents who we are and shows respect. Using history as an indicator, communication started and stopped wars.
Recently, I attended a speaking engagement with Michelle Singletary, author, “7 Money Mantras,” and columnist, The Color of Money, for the Washington Post. In the presentation, she mentioned several times, “You had better sweat the small stuff.” Of course, her reference was to money. Yet, it was an important point. It takes pennies to develop into dollars, dollars to add up to ten, and so on up the monetary ladder. Doesn’t it hold true that if we leave out the small common courtesies and respect in emails, will it not block the dollars – directly or indirectly?
When thinking over the given benefits for taking care of the “small stuff” in emails, here are three powerful mantras:
* A professional email attracts a professional response.* When you respect other people’s time, they usually will respect yours.* When communication is thought through and clear, the chances increase significantly that the response will be returned in the same manner. Stinkin’ thinking attracts the same.
10 Simple Courtesies, gathered from reading 2,000 emails, and feedback from the human resource director:
Focus on one topic per email. Keep the email simple so the receiver can focus in fast and easy. This improves the chance of a faster response, maybe any response. If you write to someone regularly, ask what he or she prefers.
An appropriate subject line will help reduce accidental deletion. It will also help locate that specific email faster if needed. When forwarding or responding, change the subject line to reflect your response. You can also add your first name in the subject line as an added identifier. I like to start mine with: “Personal note from Catherine” or follow after the subject with: “From Catherine.” If you are dealing with deadlines add: “Please respond by.”
Keep each paragraph to one thought even if the paragraph turns out to be one fragmented sentence. You will want to limit email paragraphs to six sentences. A natural way of reading from a computer screen is with a scan-read process. Screen reading dries out the eyes and reduces blinking causing eyestrain.
Add subheader titles into the email when more than three paragraphs are in the email or more than three paragraphs follow the subheader. You can add subheaders as you type or while rereading. This keeps the eyes moving fast and easy. It also allows the mind to shift from topic to topic without developing cobwebs.
Re-read your email no matter how long or short. We always think faster than our fingers can type. Thus, what is typed isn’t always what was swarming around in our mind.
Does the subject flow or was it choppy? Flow in an email isn’t the same as flow from one chapter in a book to another. Flow allows the reader to easily transition and comprehend the material. If choppy, the reader might daydream or take a break and formulate a different answer that might not fit the material, creating additional emails on your part to clarify. Frequent places to check for flow in your material are where you start or stop a message or submessage.
Is there any type of priority or order needed to follow so that the receiver follows along with the material? Are there steps or information that build on the previous message? Before you can pour a glass of milk you might want buy the milk – chuckle. When we are extremely familiar with how to do something, it’s easy to write past something, a common mishap by IT experts. Do you know the receiver and their level of knowledge or experience on the topic? My favorite saying is, “When in doubt, write it out.”
For goodness sake, turn on the spell check feature on. If you want to write pronouns in small letters, at least let spell check catch them for you.
Who are you? You would think that this one was common sense, at least I did. Yet, every week I receive 10-15 emails asking me a general question without telling me who they are or giving me some background. They are huge, open-ended questions that would take me years to answer. This falls into the lack of respect category.
What do you need or want? Forwarding an email that doesn’t ask for what you need makes the receiver try to guess. Not cool. Speak up, don’t be shy. If you take rejection personally, hire a life coach to work on this with you. Statements don’t automatically ask anything. Questions do. My dad had a saying, “Squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you can’t ask, squeak somewhere else. I can’t guess what type of oil you need.” A little harsh yet it makes its point. Go ahead and ask, and no this isn’t a reflection on you.
We all believe we have good communication skills. There could be some real surprises when you start practicing these 10 Simple Courtesies. Take your time, slow down in order to speed up. Tackle it slowly so that the lessons stick. You will be glad you did. The next email you send might be to your next boss, client, or forwarded to the President. You never know. It happened to me and it could happen to you.
About the Author: Catherine Franz is a marketing veteran, a Certified Business Coach, Certified Teleclass Leader and Trainer, speaker, author, and Master Attraction Practitioner. Business client’s include professional firms, restaurants, retail stores, coaches, employees using writing for advancement, and independent professionals across the globe, i.e., the USA, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. For daily marketing tips and electronic newsletters on marketing, Universal Laws of Attraction, and marketing writing/copywriting.
…have you ever thought how your email looked from a receiver’s viewpoint? Of course you have, every day, haven’t you? It is so easy in our fast-paced lives to let the little things go.
When you receive a poorly formatted email and you don’t know where each paragraph starts or finishes -- the thoughts are scattered and jumbled -- here’s the reader’s self chatter in action: “What the heck, it’ll take me hours to decipher this. I don’t have time for this. Can’t X be respectful? I’ll just pretend I didn’t get it and maybe their follow-up email will be clearer.” Click and delete. Of course, you have never done this – chuckle.
By chance, your next email receiver is nicer and doesn’t delete and pretend. They just move onto the next email and leave yours for the “someday in the future” stack. And maybe it will or will not ever be answered. Their response may even miss your point entirely or only provide feedback to half of the items that need addressing.
If you have difficulty getting quick responses or any response at all, the receiver could be sending you a silent message. They could feel that you are wasting their time or do want to educate you on common email courtesies.
Recently, after receiving ten emails in one day from separate independent professionals, with their personal pronouns “i’s” in lower case besides other items. I asked them to enlighten me about their lax protocols. I received a wave of negative responses. In order to keep this a family-available article, here are a few responses cleaned up: “i don’t have time, too many emails.” A few others added, “i do it to everyone.” I particularly loved the “to” in the last two emails – I do it “to” everyone.
A human resource director client shared with me that every day she deletes ten or twelve applications, about 12% of the total number she receives daily, that omit common email courtesies. A majority come from individuals with higher degrees. I chuckled at the irony. She didn’t and just heavily sighed. She found it even more serious on the number of emails she received from recruiters that also lacked these simple courtesies.
“Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff” is a book I read a few years ago if I recall correctly. Normally I wouldn’t care much about the small stuff either. However, coherent communication, whether verbal or written, still represents who we are and shows respect. Using history as an indicator, communication started and stopped wars.
Recently, I attended a speaking engagement with Michelle Singletary, author, “7 Money Mantras,” and columnist, The Color of Money, for the Washington Post. In the presentation, she mentioned several times, “You had better sweat the small stuff.” Of course, her reference was to money. Yet, it was an important point. It takes pennies to develop into dollars, dollars to add up to ten, and so on up the monetary ladder. Doesn’t it hold true that if we leave out the small common courtesies and respect in emails, will it not block the dollars – directly or indirectly?
When thinking over the given benefits for taking care of the “small stuff” in emails, here are three powerful mantras:
* A professional email attracts a professional response.* When you respect other people’s time, they usually will respect yours.* When communication is thought through and clear, the chances increase significantly that the response will be returned in the same manner. Stinkin’ thinking attracts the same.
10 Simple Courtesies, gathered from reading 2,000 emails, and feedback from the human resource director:
Focus on one topic per email. Keep the email simple so the receiver can focus in fast and easy. This improves the chance of a faster response, maybe any response. If you write to someone regularly, ask what he or she prefers.
An appropriate subject line will help reduce accidental deletion. It will also help locate that specific email faster if needed. When forwarding or responding, change the subject line to reflect your response. You can also add your first name in the subject line as an added identifier. I like to start mine with: “Personal note from Catherine” or follow after the subject with: “From Catherine.” If you are dealing with deadlines add: “Please respond by.”
Keep each paragraph to one thought even if the paragraph turns out to be one fragmented sentence. You will want to limit email paragraphs to six sentences. A natural way of reading from a computer screen is with a scan-read process. Screen reading dries out the eyes and reduces blinking causing eyestrain.
Add subheader titles into the email when more than three paragraphs are in the email or more than three paragraphs follow the subheader. You can add subheaders as you type or while rereading. This keeps the eyes moving fast and easy. It also allows the mind to shift from topic to topic without developing cobwebs.
Re-read your email no matter how long or short. We always think faster than our fingers can type. Thus, what is typed isn’t always what was swarming around in our mind.
Does the subject flow or was it choppy? Flow in an email isn’t the same as flow from one chapter in a book to another. Flow allows the reader to easily transition and comprehend the material. If choppy, the reader might daydream or take a break and formulate a different answer that might not fit the material, creating additional emails on your part to clarify. Frequent places to check for flow in your material are where you start or stop a message or submessage.
Is there any type of priority or order needed to follow so that the receiver follows along with the material? Are there steps or information that build on the previous message? Before you can pour a glass of milk you might want buy the milk – chuckle. When we are extremely familiar with how to do something, it’s easy to write past something, a common mishap by IT experts. Do you know the receiver and their level of knowledge or experience on the topic? My favorite saying is, “When in doubt, write it out.”
For goodness sake, turn on the spell check feature on. If you want to write pronouns in small letters, at least let spell check catch them for you.
Who are you? You would think that this one was common sense, at least I did. Yet, every week I receive 10-15 emails asking me a general question without telling me who they are or giving me some background. They are huge, open-ended questions that would take me years to answer. This falls into the lack of respect category.
What do you need or want? Forwarding an email that doesn’t ask for what you need makes the receiver try to guess. Not cool. Speak up, don’t be shy. If you take rejection personally, hire a life coach to work on this with you. Statements don’t automatically ask anything. Questions do. My dad had a saying, “Squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you can’t ask, squeak somewhere else. I can’t guess what type of oil you need.” A little harsh yet it makes its point. Go ahead and ask, and no this isn’t a reflection on you.
We all believe we have good communication skills. There could be some real surprises when you start practicing these 10 Simple Courtesies. Take your time, slow down in order to speed up. Tackle it slowly so that the lessons stick. You will be glad you did. The next email you send might be to your next boss, client, or forwarded to the President. You never know. It happened to me and it could happen to you.
About the Author: Catherine Franz is a marketing veteran, a Certified Business Coach, Certified Teleclass Leader and Trainer, speaker, author, and Master Attraction Practitioner. Business client’s include professional firms, restaurants, retail stores, coaches, employees using writing for advancement, and independent professionals across the globe, i.e., the USA, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. For daily marketing tips and electronic newsletters on marketing, Universal Laws of Attraction, and marketing writing/copywriting.
What E-Mail Marketers Can Learn From Banner AdsBy Paul Soltoff
A long time ago (last century, to be exact), banners flourished on the Web. People saw them and clicked. The banner worked. Then, the great banner deluge began. An overabundance of banners caused a downward spiral in CTRs and conversions.
The banner still exists, in different incarnations. It still works, and it's even regaining popularity. Still, some sites stack up banners like pancakes at IHOP. It's as if publishers, desperate for banner revenue, have their own fraternity: Phi Kramma Banner.
E-mail, too, once flourished. People weren't receiving so much email back then. They opened email and read it, they clicked on the links. E-mail worked. Then, the spam floodgates opened. Thanks to an overabundance of email, today email marketers are headed down the same slippery slope as marketers who used banners.
Banners and email are now pretty much in the same boat. Both are recovering. Recovery notwithstanding, getting consumers to respond to both is getting tougher. The commonality can be summed up in one word: clutter.
This is exacerbated with more online ad spend. Banner ad and email marketing, like just about every other form of advertising, must cut through the clutter and engage people long enough for them to hear the marketing message.
On TV, advertisers must make that connection in the first 12 seconds. In direct mail, the connection depends on the envelope message. In a print ad, the time it takes to read a headline is the only chance. So banners and email must face the same hurdles, right?
Yes, but with a significant difference. When users surf the Web or read email, their hands are literally on the trigger: the mouse. Their fingers are poised to jump to a different Web page or delete the email with a click.
It comes down to time. You've got very little time to make an impression and get the email recipient to read the message. Successful banner creators learned many lessons over the years about dealing with very little space and making every word count. Many of these lessons can be applied to email:
Few words. Craft a headline that gets your point across fast. The only way to achieve this is to cut the number of words you use; 6 to 10 is a good rule of thumb.
Simple words. Replace complicated words not everyone knows with simpler words everyone understands.
Short words. Long words take time to read. For almost every long word, there's a short one that's just as effective.
Big type. Make it easy to read your headline. Basic stuff, but I see too many small headlines that force people to spend extra time just trying to read them.
Dramatic graphics. A picture is worth a thousand words, so find graphics that enhance the headline and instantly convey your message.
Benefit-oriented copy. Features and specifications go in the body copy and supporting bullets. People want to know what's in it for them. Tell them quickly, or your email is history.
Call-to-action buttons. If you want customers to click to a landing page, use "click here" at exactly the point where it's optimal to click.
One or two fonts. Multiple fonts make reading harder and don't add anything to the message.
Above all, create a compelling, benefit-laden value proposition or offer. Even if you follow all the suggestions above exactly, your email will fail without a great offer. You're competing with thousands of ads every day. In the end, the ads with the best offers, supported by smart presentations, almost always win.
About the Author: Paul Soltoff is the chief executive officer of SendTec, Inc., a direct marketing services company specializing in customer acquisition. SendTec combines extensive direct response experience with proprietary technologies to produce scalable results. Principal services include performance-based online marketing, offline direct response marketing and direct response television. SendTec represents advertising agencies and advertisers such as RealNetworks, AARP, Monster.com, AAA, Punch Software, MyPoints, Grey Worldwide, Cosmetíque Cosmetics, Columbia House, and Euro-Pro. Prior to starting SendTec, Paul was a founder and EVP of Saatchi and Saatchi's DRTV division in New York and has over 25 years of advertising, media and direct marketing experience.
The banner still exists, in different incarnations. It still works, and it's even regaining popularity. Still, some sites stack up banners like pancakes at IHOP. It's as if publishers, desperate for banner revenue, have their own fraternity: Phi Kramma Banner.
E-mail, too, once flourished. People weren't receiving so much email back then. They opened email and read it, they clicked on the links. E-mail worked. Then, the spam floodgates opened. Thanks to an overabundance of email, today email marketers are headed down the same slippery slope as marketers who used banners.
Banners and email are now pretty much in the same boat. Both are recovering. Recovery notwithstanding, getting consumers to respond to both is getting tougher. The commonality can be summed up in one word: clutter.
This is exacerbated with more online ad spend. Banner ad and email marketing, like just about every other form of advertising, must cut through the clutter and engage people long enough for them to hear the marketing message.
On TV, advertisers must make that connection in the first 12 seconds. In direct mail, the connection depends on the envelope message. In a print ad, the time it takes to read a headline is the only chance. So banners and email must face the same hurdles, right?
Yes, but with a significant difference. When users surf the Web or read email, their hands are literally on the trigger: the mouse. Their fingers are poised to jump to a different Web page or delete the email with a click.
It comes down to time. You've got very little time to make an impression and get the email recipient to read the message. Successful banner creators learned many lessons over the years about dealing with very little space and making every word count. Many of these lessons can be applied to email:
Few words. Craft a headline that gets your point across fast. The only way to achieve this is to cut the number of words you use; 6 to 10 is a good rule of thumb.
Simple words. Replace complicated words not everyone knows with simpler words everyone understands.
Short words. Long words take time to read. For almost every long word, there's a short one that's just as effective.
Big type. Make it easy to read your headline. Basic stuff, but I see too many small headlines that force people to spend extra time just trying to read them.
Dramatic graphics. A picture is worth a thousand words, so find graphics that enhance the headline and instantly convey your message.
Benefit-oriented copy. Features and specifications go in the body copy and supporting bullets. People want to know what's in it for them. Tell them quickly, or your email is history.
Call-to-action buttons. If you want customers to click to a landing page, use "click here" at exactly the point where it's optimal to click.
One or two fonts. Multiple fonts make reading harder and don't add anything to the message.
Above all, create a compelling, benefit-laden value proposition or offer. Even if you follow all the suggestions above exactly, your email will fail without a great offer. You're competing with thousands of ads every day. In the end, the ads with the best offers, supported by smart presentations, almost always win.
About the Author: Paul Soltoff is the chief executive officer of SendTec, Inc., a direct marketing services company specializing in customer acquisition. SendTec combines extensive direct response experience with proprietary technologies to produce scalable results. Principal services include performance-based online marketing, offline direct response marketing and direct response television. SendTec represents advertising agencies and advertisers such as RealNetworks, AARP, Monster.com, AAA, Punch Software, MyPoints, Grey Worldwide, Cosmetíque Cosmetics, Columbia House, and Euro-Pro. Prior to starting SendTec, Paul was a founder and EVP of Saatchi and Saatchi's DRTV division in New York and has over 25 years of advertising, media and direct marketing experience.
