April
6,
2016
Training: Sending
Business Emails and Bulk Emails.
By Mike Hampson, owner,
Helicopter Links
(San Diego, California, USA): Is sending
an email a big deal? Is what is in the "From" field,
the "Subject Line" and the text of the
email really that important? Any thoughts? How about
these questions?
Have you ever attended a class
on how
to send an email?
How to set up your email? Or have you ever researched
and read articles about email best practices?
If you have done any of these things, in my book,
you are one step ahead of most people.
Another point. Have you
ever thought that due to the
massive
amount
of SPAM
we
each receive on a daily basis,
that
it makes
it
necessary
for us to adjust the way we send emails?
Yes? No? Have you
ever
thought
how
people who read your email assess your professionalism
and credibility based on the way you format the
emails you send and by what information you provide
the sender?
Some people
might
say
there are better ways to send an email,
some say it not might matter, some have never
thought about it and some simply don't care.
While there might be no official procedure
how the general public, businesses
and organizations should send an email, there
are certainly excellent classes teaching how to
send emails and there are well-written articles
online with excellent tips for sending business
emails
and sending
bulk emails.
While
this subject is so vast that it probably could
be turned into a book, my goal is
to try to provide some highlights of some of
the best information I have learned from the email
and marketing classes I've attended and from my
own experiences. In addition, at the bottom of this
article, I've listed some
links to articles discussing "Email Best
Practices".
If you've read this far, I feel that
simply being aware there are better ways to
send
emails,
is the
first
step
in
better
communication
and being more professional - on the job.
I'd like to start by discussing
what preceded emails: Printed business letters.
The horror! Does anyone remember how to correctly
format a business letter? (Examples: Block, Modified
Block, Semi-Block, Indented Form are some of the
major methods to format a printed business letter.)
Is this important? Do you know why standard formats
for
business letters
were created and why there are so few? Readability.
By having set formats with key information in the
same are of each business letter,
this helps to have better communication between
business people.
If you have an an employee who can
write a business letter correctly formatted to
a standard
business letter look, that person is most likely
worth their weight in gold.
Interestingly, a standard printed
business letter would have most of the following
items.
- Using pre-printed company letterhead.
- Adding the date of the letter.
- Full address of the company
you are writing to.
- Reference line. (Example: REF: Purchase Order
#56-893)
- Adding a salutation. (Example: Dear Jane,)
- The body of the letter, with paragraph(s).
- Closure line. (Example: Sincerely,)
- Signature line. (Your name and title)
- Enclosure line. (Did you add something else
to the envelope, besides the letter, like a picture,
a form, a free sample or something else? That
is an "enclosure".)
- Address the envelope, add postage and mail the
letter.
What
about emails? Do emails seem easier, simpler
and have less steps than a printed
business letter? Yes or no? Let's take a look.
First, you need to set up your
email.
- Set up your email.
- If it is a business or personal email, remember
to put your full name in the "From" Field.
- Create folders by subject, person's name
or business name for
the
emails
you want
to keep.
(A business might have email folders for
orders, each client, each
vendor,
a tax folder, magazine
folders, association folders
by name
of association and things of this nature.)
- By setting up multiple folders for your email
list, you can easily go back later that month,
year, 4 years in the past or more, and easily
find important emails by subject.
- When you receive an email, after it's read,
if it should be saved, save it in an appropriate
folder.
- When you read an email and you know for sure,
you don't need the email, then delete it right
away.
- I remember that one company I worked for. They
never deleted emails from any clients. They were
all saved. That way they always had a history
of
emails from all their clients.
Here are some things to think about
when sending an email.
- Did you send the email to the correct email
address?
- Do you need to send the email to multiple email
addresses?
- Do you need to CC or BCC the email to anyone
else?
- CC: Carbon Copy. This means you are sending
the email to someone else to read.
- BCC: Blind
Carbon Copy: Means you are sending it to other
people but the main recipient and everyone
else do not know that other people are receive
the email as well.
- Do you know that anyone from your own IT department
or any recipient of the email can forward it to
anyone they want? That what you think might be
a "private email" is not actually that
private?
- Note: The date of the email is added by the
email program.
- Good subject lines are important. Make sure
the subject line is clear, clear, clear. Explain
in the least amount of words what the email is
about but be specific.
- Are you aware that you should try to make sure
your subject line DOES NOT look like SPAM?
- Please remember, a vague subject line looks
like SPAM and might be deleted.
- Avoid one or two worded subject lines. Email
subject lines with one word such as, "Hi.", "Hello", "Quote" or "RFQ" or "Order" or "Purchase
Order" look like SPAM.
- Good Subject Lines look like this, "Tom
Jones from Johnson Associates", "RFQ
from Tom Jones at Johnson Associates." Or "Purchase
Order From Tom at Johnson Associates, USA."
- Do you have an appropriate salutation? (Example, "Dear
Jane" or "Hi Tom".) Several good
articles on appropriate salutations are at the
bottom of
this article.
- If you don't use a salutation, the recipient
might not be certain if the email is actually
for them or not.
- Does the salutation match the email address?
Did you write, "Dear Tom" but you actually
sent the email to Jane Smith?
- Did you use paragraphs to make the email more
readable? If you don't use paragraphs, your email
will be more difficult for people to comprehend.
Not using paragraphs is bad communication.
- Are you listing multiple points? Did you know
that a bulleted list of information is easier
to read than a paragraph filled with information
separated by commas?
- Did you re-read your email to make sure it makes
sense?
- Is the email written so it's easy to understand?
- Did you include everything in the email that
needs to be there?
- Is the email grammatically correct?
- Did you spell check the email?
- Do you have a closure line? (Examples: Sincerely,
Sincerely yours, Regards, Best regards, etc.)
- There is a good online article listed at the
bottom of this article which includes many good
examples of closure lines and examples of closure
words not to use.
- At the end of the email, did you include your
first and last name, title,
phone
number, email address, website, social media links,
company name, full company mailing address including
zip
or
postal codes and your country?
- There are about
196 countries
in the world, plus islands, territories, etc.
Some people live on ships. Including your country
is important. What if one of your customers
(in the USA) forwards your email to a potential
client who lives in France of India. Don't you
think it would be helpful if you included what
country your company is based?
- Did you want to send attachment? Did you write
in the text of the email that you sent an attachment?
And did you send the attachment or did you forget
to send the attachment?
- Did you send sensitive material in your email?
Are you certain that sensitive material can be
sent by an email and are you authorized to send
this information by email?
While it seems that writing a printed
letter and mailing it is more complicated and has
more steps than sending an email, one can see
that
sending an email could have as many steps
or more, than a printed letter, that is, if good
communication is the goal. In my
opinion,
sending
an
email shouldn't
be
taken
lightly
and
having a mental or written check list will help
professionals from sending out unprofessional
or incomplete emails.
One other thought. While a well written
email takes time to write for clear communication,
can a phone call
clear
up a
problem
with less time
and effort than a dozen back and forth emails? Then
I recommend to make a phone call. And if you need
a record of the phone call, you then
follow-up the phone call with an email recounting
the phone call. One phone call and one follow-up
email is probably more effective than a dozen back
and forth emails!
Sending Bulk emails.
- The best bulk emails are usually sent from a
trained team of professionals. The ideal bulk
email team
includes a creative manager, writer, graphic designer
and a web professional.
- When setting up a
bulk email list, please, use
your
COMPANY
NAME
in the "FROM" FIELD.
- I see a trend that bulk emails are not being
set-up correctly. Many businesses
and organizations will
use
a
person's
name from their organization (a marketing manager
or VIP) for the name in the "FROM" FIELD
for their bulk email list. This is wrong.
- Your
"FROM" FIELD should be your business
name. REMEMBER: People joining BULK EMAIL LISTS
are joining an email
list because they want to get information
from a company or organization. The user is looking
for and
expecting
to receive
an email from the company's name or nonprofit's
name,
in the "FROM" FIELD. An email user will
typically NOT know the name of people working
for a company.
- When a company
uses a employee's name in a
bulk email, the
recipient
of the email
does NOT know the email sender's name and the
email now looks like SPAM.
- Email recipients remember a company or organizations
NAMES. Most people DO NOT know the names of employees
who
work at these corporations or non-profit
organizations!
- And to further beat a dead horse, for example,
if you are sending out a bulk email, then please
put yourself in the shoes of the people receiving
the
email.
If a person receives an email from John Smith,
the email does not sound important. Who is John
Smith? If a person in the helicopter industry
receives an email and
the "From" field says, "Sikorsky",
the recipient recognizes the name Sikorsky, and
will most likely want to
look
at
the email.
- Good subject lines are important. Make sure
the subject line
is clear, clear, clear. Explain in the
least amount of words what the email is about.
Subject lines which are too clever (Example: Wow.
Can you believe this?) or have a one word subject
line (Quote. Brochure. RFQ, Inquiry and etc.),
look like SPAM and the email recipient
and
will most
likely delete the email.
- One has to decide if your email will be in text
or will look like a web page. If your email is
going to look like a web page with pictures, then
it would be best to have a graphic designer
and a web professional involved in your bulk email
process.
- I would always recommend to have all people
working on bulk emails to take formal training
on the sending bulk emails. If your company can't
afford to train your team on bulk email best practices,
then I'd get online
and do your own research on the bulk email best
practices and I recommend you do all your learning
during your working hours.
- I also recommend a for-pay online training company
called Lynda.com.
They offer 24/7 training (by watching their videos)
on subjects such as bulk emails, marketing courses,
Word, Excel, Grahpic Design, Web Design, IT courses
and many
types courses for business professionals. The
nice thing about Lynda.com is you can watch videos
any time of the day and you can watch a video
over and over again. The annual pricing is not
bad and hopefully your employer will pay for this
service.
- You are only getting paid to work at the company.
If a
company
will
not train you correctly, then you need to
take the bull by the horns and train yourself
on
company time. (Without telling this to your
manager.)
- There are many bulk email companies around the
world. Find one that works for you. The one I
have successfully used for years (based in the
USA) is called Constant Contact. They are a very
good
company,
they offer
free
training and have excellent customer service.
Constant Contact also has very good statistics
on how many people are opening your bulk emails,
how many people are clicking on links in your
email and things of this nature.
- Remember, in general, bulk emails should
be infrequent. There are, of course, exceptions
to this rule. If you are sending our press releases
to
the media or if you have a daily news feed,
then that's frequency of emails is appropriate
for your bulk emails. However, I would say that
in
general,
keep your bulk emails to a minimum each month.
(If you have a newsletter, once a week would be
the maximum I would recommend. Once or twice a
month is a good bulk email rate.)
- Constant Contact can help you keep a legal email
list. More about this several bullet points down.
- At the beginning of ALL BULK EMAILS there should
be the statement, "You are receiving this
email because you signed up for it. You may always
unsubscribe.
A link to unsubscribe is at the bottom of this
email."
- Also, forward this email to a friend link is
always important to have at the top of the email.
- At the bottom of your email you must always
have an "Unsubscribe" link.
- And remember, due to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003
(U.S. Government), you may NEVER add anyone to
your email list without their permission, no matter
if they are a good customer and "you know" they
won't care. That means this, if you want your
customers to join your email list, you may email
them one
at a time and or call them by phone and ask them
to join your email list. You can ask them to join
your email list on your brochures, website, invoices,
packaging slips, instruction manuals, and through
your customers service and sales force and etc.
But you are not allowed to add your all your customers
to a bulk email list without their permission.
- If you already added all your customers to an
email list, then from what I understand, you need
to send them an email stating that they must opt-in
to your email list and if they don't, they'll
be deleted from your email list. And once you
do this, you'll have a legal email list. With
a bulk email company such as Constant Contact,
you can easily send a bulk email asking your
customers to opt-in to your email list.
- The content should be good content. What is
happening with your company, industry trends,
coupons, etc. If you only have enough good content
about once a month, then your bulk emails should
be about one per month. The rate of sending emails
per week or per month depends upon your company
and what you are offering
them in your emails.
- At the bottom of your email, I would always
have your full company name spelled out in text,
with your full company mailing address, country
name, email address, phone numbers and links to
all your social
media pages.
- If you send too many emails from your company
each month, then people might not be interested
in
your emails any more and you'll start having an
lower open rate and/or they will begin to delete
themselves from your email list.
- One important thing to note, is that even if
people don't open your bulk emails all the time,
that there is value in branding your company name
to each email recipient. For example, I am on
an email list for coupons from several stores
and restaurants. While I usually never open their
emails, I keep all their emails in a coupon folder
and when I'm ready to buy, I simply go to my coupon
folder and look for their emails and find their
recent discounts. Also seeing their company names
in the "From Field" each week, keeps their company
name present in my mind.
- The industry standard for the open rate for
bulk emails is about 20%. This is why excellent
subject lines are important, the content of the
email should be useful and this is why you should
try to limit the frequency of your emails. If
your company has an open rate of 20% or more,
you are doing something right with your bulk emails.
I hope this article helps you. And
I've listed several links below to some
online articles which I like, on tips and tricks
on sending out better emails. Please remember, if
you
need
more tips for email best practices, look up more
articles online and/or take a class!
Mindful Communication Tools: Email Best Practices
www.blog.prialto.com/mindful-communication-tools-email-practices
* 2013
The Art Of The Effective Business
Email
www.forbes.com/sites/robasghar/2014/06/12/the-art-of-the-effective-business-email
* 2014
Employment-Related Email Message Examples
www.thebalance.com/employment-related-email-message-examples-2061898
* 2017
Here is the perfect way to start an
email — and 18 greetings you should usually
avoid
www.businessinsider.com/the-perfect-way-to-start-an-email-and-greetings-you-should-avoid-2016-5/
* 2016
Letter Salutations and Greetings
www.thebalance.com/letter-salutations-and-greetings-2059709
* 2017
Professional Letter Greetings
www.thebalance.com/professional-letter-greetings-2062310
* 2017
How to End a Letter (With Closing
Examples)
www.thebalance.com/how-to-end-a-letter-2062308
* 2017
-End article.
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