What Message are You Delivering?
Email in todays world is a more powerful communication channel than the land line telephone. I can hear the groan now, he does not know what he is talking about, but before you jump on that band wagon think about this.
- How many people use cell phones as their home phone?
- How many people check their email at work and via their cell?
- How many times have you cut a vendors cold call short and told them to email you the information?
- How many times have you had a customer do the same thing to you?
- Which number do you give to friends and colleagues, your home or cell?
Time to move on….
Now what kind of message are you delivering in email communication or is it even being delivered?
Email is a form of text communication and so often I see emails inside of this industry that go against established best practices. The reason we see this in our industry is many things are jut accepted. Sometimes I wonder if it is from lack of knowledge or a lack of caring. (That is a post for another day.) We have to consider our recipients when we communicate via email not our preferences, lest your messages hit the spam box and your domain gets blacklisted among the major ISP’s. If this happens you are cooked!!
Remember that email is a text form of communication and here are some tips to get you message delivered, read and responded to:
- TURN YOUR CAPS LOCK OFF - car guys are lazy when it comes to this. I am sure most in the internet department realize that you need to use proper punctuation and that communicating in ALL CAPS is the equivalent of YELLING online. Point blank it is just rude!!
- Do not send large images or mostly html messages. One of the key indicators for spam detection algorithms is the amount of html used in a message. It is much better to send links to images than is is to send the image itself. If you send in pure html make sure you create a text version of the message in Multi-part MIME. This will allow email clients that block html messages to load your text message. Think Blackberry!!
- Text emails lines should only be 65 characters in length. How many time have you seen a message not properly format in an email reader? It is because the lines automatically wrap before the end thus creating a poorly formated email message.
- About links, Try not to include more than three if you can. Instead of linking to an inventory item and your credit application. Tell the consumer how to find your credit app from the inventory item.
While this is list is not all inclusive it gives you a good start. The next article will be about CAN SPAM compliance and the ramifications of getting it wrong. Subscribe to my RSS feed and be notified immediately of that post and all future ones.
