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Showing posts with label Email. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Email. Show all posts
Monday, February 9, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
How to send a personal email
How to send a personal email
Here are some easy to follow tips that will help you avoid being seen as a spammer, or having your emails trashed or ignored. The thing is this: email reduces friction. Greedy, lazy organizations have embraced this and tried to figure out how to blast as many emails as they can as cheaply as they can, relying on the law of large numbers. The real law of large numbers is, "using large numbers is against the law."
I want you to add friction back in. If you want to be seen as being personal, the best strategy is to be personal, which is slow and expensive.
1. Don't send the same email to large numbers of people.
2. If you have more than a few people to contact, you'll be tempted to copy and paste or mail merge. Don't. You'll get caught. It shows. If it's important enough for someone to read, it's important enough for you to rewrite.
3. Careful with the salutation. Don't write, "Dear Claudia," if you don't usually write "Dear" at the beginning of all your emails.
4. Don't mush the salutation together with the rest of the note. If I had a dollar for every email that started, "Joe, When experts come together..." That's not personal. That's lazy merging. See rule 1.
5. Don't send HTML or pictures. Personal email doesn't, why are you?
6. Don't talk like a press release. Talk like a person. A person is reading this, so why are you talking like that?
7. Be short. The purpose of an email is not to sell the person on anything other than writing back. If you don't have a personal, interesting way to start a conversation, don't write.
8. Don't send an email only when you really need something. That's not personal, that's selfish.
9. Do you have a sig with a phone number in it? Your phone number? If you don't trust me enough to give me your real phone number, I don't trust you enough to read your mail.
10. Don't mark your email urgent. Urgent to you is not urgent to me.
11. Don't lie in your subject line, and don't be cute. You're not clever enough to be cute. Just be honest.
12. Following up on an impersonal spam email is twice as dumb as sending the first one. Invest the time to do it right the first time.
13. Anticipated, personal and relevant permission mail will always dramatically outperform greedy short-term spam. I promise.
14. Just because you have someone's email address doesn't mean you have the right to email them.
Here are some easy to follow tips that will help you avoid being seen as a spammer, or having your emails trashed or ignored. The thing is this: email reduces friction. Greedy, lazy organizations have embraced this and tried to figure out how to blast as many emails as they can as cheaply as they can, relying on the law of large numbers. The real law of large numbers is, "using large numbers is against the law."
I want you to add friction back in. If you want to be seen as being personal, the best strategy is to be personal, which is slow and expensive.
1. Don't send the same email to large numbers of people.
2. If you have more than a few people to contact, you'll be tempted to copy and paste or mail merge. Don't. You'll get caught. It shows. If it's important enough for someone to read, it's important enough for you to rewrite.
3. Careful with the salutation. Don't write, "Dear Claudia," if you don't usually write "Dear" at the beginning of all your emails.
4. Don't mush the salutation together with the rest of the note. If I had a dollar for every email that started, "Joe, When experts come together..." That's not personal. That's lazy merging. See rule 1.
5. Don't send HTML or pictures. Personal email doesn't, why are you?
6. Don't talk like a press release. Talk like a person. A person is reading this, so why are you talking like that?
7. Be short. The purpose of an email is not to sell the person on anything other than writing back. If you don't have a personal, interesting way to start a conversation, don't write.
8. Don't send an email only when you really need something. That's not personal, that's selfish.
9. Do you have a sig with a phone number in it? Your phone number? If you don't trust me enough to give me your real phone number, I don't trust you enough to read your mail.
10. Don't mark your email urgent. Urgent to you is not urgent to me.
11. Don't lie in your subject line, and don't be cute. You're not clever enough to be cute. Just be honest.
12. Following up on an impersonal spam email is twice as dumb as sending the first one. Invest the time to do it right the first time.
13. Anticipated, personal and relevant permission mail will always dramatically outperform greedy short-term spam. I promise.
14. Just because you have someone's email address doesn't mean you have the right to email them.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Email Communication Tips
Effective communication is the key to success in any thing you do. It is imperative to make sure you are clear, concise, kind and considerate.
An email is a business correspondence and needs to be treated as such. It is also a permanent document and one that can be easily forwarded to hundreds of people.
Having to read an email that is full of typographical errors, slang and/or acronyms is painful. It is important to draft your email correspondence as if you are writing a letter on company stationery or an internal memorandum. Proper use of the subject line, greeting, body of the email and closing are necessary. Spell check does not replace proofreading as it is not very effective in picking up grammatical and punctuation errors.
Equally as important is the message the reader receives. Because an email can easily be misconstrued as to its meaning and tone, it is important to take the time to construct it so that a clear, friendly message is sent. Using all capital letters is considered raising your voice; using acronyms and all lower case letters is considered juvenile and unprofessional. Not having the proper greeting and closing is considered rude. People can form all kinds of opinions of you from your email exchanges without you even being aware.
The best way to determine whether your communication sets the proper tone and provides complete information is to proofread it as if you are the recipient. Putting yourself in the receiver's shoes for a minute and allowing yourself to think about the message and feel its tone will allow you to construct better emails. In addition, think about whether you have any questions after reading it. The goal is always that the reader has no additional questions after reading your email so you can avoid multiple exchanges in an attempt to clarify what you could have already set forth in the initial communication.
Other email pitfalls to AVOID are:
- Sending the email to the wrong person or not including all parties. If you are drafting a lengthy email, leave the To: section blank until just before you are ready to send and then carefully include the proper individuals.
- Forgetting to attach the attachment. As soon as you refer to an attachment, go ahead and attach it at that point rather than waiting until you complete your draft which increases the likelihood of forgetting.
- Including information in an email that you would not want anyone but the recipient to see. Remember that email can be forwarded to anyone. Leave editorial and unpleasant comments out as you do not know where your email could likely land and the written word cannot be retracted.
- Sending an email while angry. Use the 24 hour rule . Draft your email and then let it sit as a draft until your cooler head prevails. There is a very good likelihood that you will re-draft it the next day.
An email is a business correspondence and needs to be treated as such. It is also a permanent document and one that can be easily forwarded to hundreds of people.
Having to read an email that is full of typographical errors, slang and/or acronyms is painful. It is important to draft your email correspondence as if you are writing a letter on company stationery or an internal memorandum. Proper use of the subject line, greeting, body of the email and closing are necessary. Spell check does not replace proofreading as it is not very effective in picking up grammatical and punctuation errors.
Equally as important is the message the reader receives. Because an email can easily be misconstrued as to its meaning and tone, it is important to take the time to construct it so that a clear, friendly message is sent. Using all capital letters is considered raising your voice; using acronyms and all lower case letters is considered juvenile and unprofessional. Not having the proper greeting and closing is considered rude. People can form all kinds of opinions of you from your email exchanges without you even being aware.
The best way to determine whether your communication sets the proper tone and provides complete information is to proofread it as if you are the recipient. Putting yourself in the receiver's shoes for a minute and allowing yourself to think about the message and feel its tone will allow you to construct better emails. In addition, think about whether you have any questions after reading it. The goal is always that the reader has no additional questions after reading your email so you can avoid multiple exchanges in an attempt to clarify what you could have already set forth in the initial communication.
Other email pitfalls to AVOID are:
- Sending the email to the wrong person or not including all parties. If you are drafting a lengthy email, leave the To: section blank until just before you are ready to send and then carefully include the proper individuals.
- Forgetting to attach the attachment. As soon as you refer to an attachment, go ahead and attach it at that point rather than waiting until you complete your draft which increases the likelihood of forgetting.
- Including information in an email that you would not want anyone but the recipient to see. Remember that email can be forwarded to anyone. Leave editorial and unpleasant comments out as you do not know where your email could likely land and the written word cannot be retracted.
- Sending an email while angry. Use the 24 hour rule . Draft your email and then let it sit as a draft until your cooler head prevails. There is a very good likelihood that you will re-draft it the next day.
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