|
|
 |
Writing Effective Emails
Sometimes email messages can get quite long, especially when you quote much of the material that has been sent in previous emails. Also, emails often get long if you have a lot to say or you need to give a comprehensive overview of a particular business situation. Most people tend to find that the letters and emails they receive that are short are the ones they responded to most positively and had the best feelings about. Long letters do get a positive response - however, almost invariably, long communications are only given a positive rating if we have a very close and warm relationship with the person who has written to us. We rarely feel positive towards acquaintances and people we do not know, who send us long letters or emails. This has important implications for people using email in business. The vast majority of your emails at work are going to be sent to people you do not know or have only the slimmest of relationships with. Hence anything other than a short email is likely to lead towards a negative feeling in your reader. Play safe; keep it short! This is all very well in theory, of course, but in practice, particularly at work, you need to include a lot of material. The answer is to treat the email as though it were a covering letter. Then attach the main text as a separate word processor document. All email programs can attach files to them, yet vast numbers of emails are sent without using this facility. The advantage of putting your main material in an attachment is that your recipient immediately views your message in a positive light because it is short and to the point. You should summarise the content of the attachment in a sentence or two - in that way your reader can gain all they need to know, without having to open the attached file. However, if they need more depth you have provided it for them. One technique you can use for shortening your email is to write the main message in your word processing software, with all the detail you need. Then take a break, do something else and later on, read through your text. Now try to summarise it in a few sentences - that summary should be the main part of your email. Trying to summarise something you have just written is difficult as all the detail will still be in your mind. That's why taking a break can help you as you leave your mind uncluttered and make summary writing much easier. Your summary email, together with the word processor document as an attachment is much more likely to please your recipient. This means there is considerable value in taking time to construct your email properly, rather than just dashing something off. Another way in which you can be sure of keeping emails short is to avoid 'quoting' vast amounts of previous emails. One of the benefits of the 'reply' button on email programs is that you can quote the previous email. In this way the recipient can easily see what you are responding to. However, since many emails go back and forth between various people, the message can quickly become very long indeed - even though most of it is material from previous messages. The answer to solving this is to only quote what you need to send someone in order to make your reply understandable. By all means, press the 'reply' button to quote the original email, but then go through the quoted text and delete everything that is irrelevant to what you are going to write about. Doing so is seeing the message from your reader's viewpoint - they don't want to wade through the original text (their own!) just to see which point you are commenting on. It is much easier from their viewpoint if your reply is clear. In other words, only use selective quoting - not wholesale quoting of emails as is the most common practice. An additional reason why some emails are so long is because the author is trying to cover various topics. They are almost 'brain dumping' everything they can think of that is important or relevant to the reader. Meanwhile, the poor recipient has to work their way through this mess to try and find out what is important. Good communication, particularly to people we don't know, is focused communication. That means, in essence, that each email should be about one topic and one topic only. A hint to this is given in the email software itself where you have to type a 'subject' for your email. If your emails are about more than one subject - stop! Each email should only be about one subject. Your recipient will react far more positively if you sent four separate short emails about four subjects than trying to cram all the material into one, inevitably longer message. Also, when these separate messages get replied to, the quoted material is shorter. Hence, think always, one message - one email. About The Author Graham Jones is the author of Effective Email an e-book priced at £9.99. For more details or to download a copy now go to: http://www.effective-email.biz
MORE RESOURCES:
Email-Marketing - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Protect Yourself from Being Accused of Sending SPAM Email is a vital part of doing business online, but are you setting yourself up for SPAM complaints? If you are accused of spamming, whether it's true or not, there are serious consequences that could potentially shut down your online business.Are Your Emails CAN-SPAM Compliant?The CAN-SPAM law has caused quite a bit of confusion about what is and is not acceptable when sending out business or commercial related emails. Why Use Permission-Based Email Marketing? The goal of all marketing is to attract interest in, build desire for, and generate sales of your products or services. Email marketing is a perfect medium to pick up where other marketing leaves off. A Guide To Using an Automatic Responder It's unbelievable.. How You Can Automate Your Business Using Autoresponders What is an Autoresponder?An Autoresponder is a program or service that allows you to automatically send pre-written emails to anyone at anytime. It is basically a sequential automated email system. Six Easy White-Listing Ways... Stop Losing Important Emails! Are you dead sure about receiving of all the important emails that is sent to you?"The chances are that you are among the 42% of the people who ARE NOT receiving the genuine emails and newsletters that you requested for".Why this is so?Increasingly, ISPs are using filtering systems to try and keep S/p/a/m out of customers' inboxes. Save Time By Creating Email Signature Templates If you're like me, there are certain types of email that you send out regularly that follow a set form (client follow up notes, meeting notes, email article submission, etc). These can be irritating to have to recreate from scratch every time, but the tried and true method of creating a seperate document-file template, then sending that out as an attachment, may not always be appropriate. How Effective is Your Email? How Can You Tell? Is your email getting to your list members? If so, how many of them are opening your message? If the email isn't getting through, how many of your messages are "undeliverable" because of a bad email address? And how do you find out what these numbers are? In order to test the effectiveness of an email campaign, you need to use html email. Although I have fought against it for several years, I consented to use it this one time in order to do the necessary tracking. Signature Files: The Easy Way To Create More Business If you do business as an affiliate, then you're constantly concerned with getting your name and your business information out there. You probably send a lot of e-mails, post on message boards, and submit articles to business e-zines. The Moneys In The List - But How Much? The internet seems to be full of hyped up business opportunities. What evidence there is to support the feasibility of a business opportunity is often anecdotal - or we may be asked to take the word of a well known internet guru when he tells us that this is the "next big thing". 8 Quick, Hot Reasons You Should Offer an E-mail Course Today 1. E-mail courses are generally quick and easy to create. Taking Care of Busines... E-mail In this digital day and age, communicating through email is getting more and more important. This is of course also true for customer service and help desks. The Opt-In Secret Everyone knows that in order to be successful online you need build a large (quality) list through some type of Opt-In offer.You see them now on virtually every site you visit on the internet, some type of form, whether from a pop-up window or directly on the site itself, that is asking for your name and email address in exchange for some type of offer (newsletter, e-course, free chapter etc. Email Etiquette II I had great feedback from my last article, and was asked to write further on the subject; hence my title.This month I'll share on Email Etiquette in discussion groups. Email: When You Dont Get a Response The lack of an email response is an issue I have grappled with many times especially since I rely on email as a primary means of communication rather than the phone because of my hearing loss.You email a client, follow up, and whatnot. Having an Opt In List As an Affiliate Marketer Is Crucial What is an Opt-in List and what is its significance in Affiliate Marketing? This may be the question playing in your mind, especially for Affiliate Marketing neophytes; and it is a question worth asking.Opt-in list building and lead capture is one of smartest and most effective strategies that affiliate marketers can use. Top 3 Reasons Why RSS Is Better Than Email Everyone is talking about RSS. Blogs, newsites and the like are putting those little orange RSS link thingies all over their sites. Personal vs Professional Life Email - Dont Squander Your First Internet Impression My first email address was with compuserve.com back when you could only have numbers for an email address. Benchmark Study of Email Database Services -- Email Appending and ECOA Match Rates Revealed --NEWTON, MA, (November 3, 2004) - FreshAddress, Inc., a leading email services provider, released the industry's first benchmark data on email appending and ECOA (Email Change of Address) solutions. Writing Newsletters Online: How to Get it Right A strange thing has been happening to newsletters online. They have been turning into either a) promotional emails or b) web pages delivered by email. Autoresponder Services Improve Your Profits Perhaps you, like me, have web hosting that includes, free of any extra charge, unlimited autoresponders. That being the case, you might be inclined to balk at any suggestion to start paying for them.
|
|
Home | Marketing eCourse | Online Marketing Kit | Web Hosting | Links | ClickBank Portal Advertising Information | Blogging & RSS | Branding Information | Copywriting | Traffic Building Email Marketing | Ezine Publishing | Site Promotion | PPC Advertising | E-Books |
| Copywrite © 2006 www.AdAdvantageSuccess.com All Rights Reserved. |
