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Will You Add? - e-Mails Not Getting Answered? Shhhh! Here's Why
As chains and independents continue to battle for market share and the consumer’s dollar, focusing inward can provide a more profitable approach. Instead of continually trying to attract new guests, incentivize the employees to keep the ones we already have and perhaps get those guests to spend a little more.Coupons, fliers, commercials, billboards and door hangers may get the message out and the instore signage may plant another seed, but it is ultimately up to the employee talking w
4. Umm, seriously ... is it really THAT important?
Ugh. Do I really need to explain this one? People who mark ALL of their messages High Priority remind me of the little dude who cried wolf, if you know what I mean.
When I consistently see these from the same people all the time, I start ignoring the priority and answering them LAST in a mail check, just to spite 'em.
Granted, not everyone is as crazy as me and will do this. But at the very least, you're still hurting your chances of getting a reply to *seriously* urgent messages quickly, by abusing priority markers.
»-«
I could go on. I won't.
(Yet.)
I'll save the rest for "Part 2." Until then, clean up your e-m
WHAT ARE "UNTAPPED PROSPECTS? Untapped prospects are a) accounts and sites with the same characteristics as your best customers, but are not in your marketing database, and are therefore invisible to you, and b) unidentified key player contacts within accounts and sites you are already targeting who are in the decision-making group for your product or service. These contacts are especially significant, because they represent a segment of your market you may now believe is visibl
Here are four common reasons why YOUR mail could be going "the way of the spam", and how to reverse them to get your messages answered -- and answered *fast*:
1. "Can you hear me now? Durn! Can you hear me now? Frick! Can you hear me now? Cripes! Can you...?"
Follow-up e-mails are okay, and quite necessary during these times of overzealous spam filtering. But for the love of all things good and holy ... please give your recipient a reasonable amount of time to answer the FIRST message FIRST!
If you haven't waited *at least* 24 hours -- particularly on a first contact -- you haven't waited long enough. People do have to take care of lives, and spouses, and hunger pangs, and bathing, and... (well okay, maybe not those last two if we're in a REAL pinch ;)).
2. Please, God ... *NO* HTML!
It still boggles my mind how many people ignore this rule.
HTML mail comes to about *twice the size* of plain text mail with equal content. If your recipient can set their mail to skip downloading messages over a certain size, and that size is set low, your e-mail will be cut off in mid-message.
This means the recipient then has to make an extra effort to retrieve YOUR message from the server.
(Annoyance #1.)
And people who send HTML mail seem to always choose a bright blue(??!) hyperlink-colored font that's WAY too tiny for the average eye to read. Umm...
WHY?!
Just about anything other than Courier New is GUARANTEED to be hard to read in some e-mail programs -- and it's usually blind luck that your recipient will HAVE one of those with this problem.
(Annoyance #2.)
And don't even get me started on the odd "glow" blue text has when plopped on a white background ... please?
3. "NO, Mommy! I don't WANNA read an ezine!"
It's inconsiderate to send ezine length e-mails to business people -- period.
You're almost guaranteeing that your mail won't be fully read, or that you'll get a half-a**ed reply, because the reader didn't feel like wading through your verbosity to get to the goods.
"Ezine length" is generally about 9 kilobytes (9k) and above. You can usually tell how large an e-mail is before sending by checking its size in your mail program's outbox. If not, for your reference, 9k is about 650 words. (Yeesh!)
Unless the recipient is *expecting* a long reply from you, 3k (200 words) is a good stopping point for a first contact.
NOTE: YES, this goes for personal e-mails too. Being "friends" with someone isn't license to consistently disrespect their time with mammoth e-mails unless they send the same to you -- consistently.
So, no saying the same thing 8 killion different ways, or using "flowery" language and "pretty" mental pictures to get your point across.
Just say it, say something else and for Heaven's sake ... KEEP IT MOVING.
4. Umm, seriously ... is it really THAT important?
Ugh. Do I really need to explain this one? People who mark ALL of their messages High Priority remind me of the little dude who cried wolf, if you know what I mean.
When I consistently see these from the same people all the time, I start ignoring the priority and answering them LAST in a mail check, just to spite 'em.
Granted, not everyone is as crazy as me and will do this. But at the very least, you're still hurting your chances of getting a reply to *seriously* urgent messages quickly, by abusing priority markers.
»-«
I could go on. I won't.
(Yet.)
I'll save the rest for "Part 2." Until then, clean up your e-ma
Does it feel like you spend all your volunteer time, or time at the office in meetings? You know, the endless meetings, the ones that frustrate everyone and accomplish little. This is a common complaint among workers and volunteers, of all types and levels. Does it have to be this way? I do not believe so. Here are some guidelines for conducting a productive and as short as practical meeting. Share these ideas with everyone you know who is a victim of the meeting plague.Have an exact (
2. Please, God ... *NO* HTML!
It still boggles my mind how many people ignore this rule.
HTML mail comes to about *twice the size* of plain text mail with equal content. If your recipient can set their mail to skip downloading messages over a certain size, and that size is set low, your e-mail will be cut off in mid-message.
This means the recipient then has to make an extra effort to retrieve YOUR message from the server.
(Annoyance #1.)
And people who send HTML mail seem to always choose a bright blue(??!) hyperlink-colored font that's WAY too tiny for the average eye to read. Umm...
WHY?!
Just about anything other than Courier New is GUARANTEED to be hard to read in some e-mail programs -- and it's usually blind luck that your recipient will HAVE one of those with this problem.
(Annoyance #2.)
And don't even get me started on the odd "glow" blue text has when plopped on a white background ... please?
3. "NO, Mommy! I don't WANNA read an ezine!"
It's inconsiderate to send ezine length e-mails to business people -- period.
You're almost guaranteeing that your mail won't be fully read, or that you'll get a half-a**ed reply, because the reader didn't feel like wading through your verbosity to get to the goods.
"Ezine length" is generally about 9 kilobytes (9k) and above. You can usually tell how large an e-mail is before sending by checking its size in your mail program's outbox. If not, for your reference, 9k is about 650 words. (Yeesh!)
Unless the recipient is *expecting* a long reply from you, 3k (200 words) is a good stopping point for a first contact.
NOTE: YES, this goes for personal e-mails too. Being "friends" with someone isn't license to consistently disrespect their time with mammoth e-mails unless they send the same to you -- consistently.
So, no saying the same thing 8 killion different ways, or using "flowery" language and "pretty" mental pictures to get your point across.
Just say it, say something else and for Heaven's sake ... KEEP IT MOVING.
4. Umm, seriously ... is it really THAT important?
Ugh. Do I really need to explain this one? People who mark ALL of their messages High Priority remind me of the little dude who cried wolf, if you know what I mean.
When I consistently see these from the same people all the time, I start ignoring the priority and answering them LAST in a mail check, just to spite 'em.
Granted, not everyone is as crazy as me and will do this. But at the very least, you're still hurting your chances of getting a reply to *seriously* urgent messages quickly, by abusing priority markers.
»-«
I could go on. I won't.
(Yet.)
I'll save the rest for "Part 2." Until then, clean up your e-m
So you have been writing mortgages like crazy now for the last few years. You have a pretty big database of customers and hopefully you have been getting and keeping full contact information for them. An organized database is the first key to customer retention.The next step is to put together a direct mail campaign to keep these customers thinking about you when they think about mortgages. It is often years between times when each customer needs a mortgage professional, and it takes far less
WHY?!
Just about anything other than Courier New is GUARANTEED to be hard to read in some e-mail programs -- and it's usually blind luck that your recipient will HAVE one of those with this problem.
(Annoyance #2.)
And don't even get me started on the odd "glow" blue text has when plopped on a white background ... please?
3. "NO, Mommy! I don't WANNA read an ezine!"
It's inconsiderate to send ezine length e-mails to business people -- period.
You're almost guaranteeing that your mail won't be fully read, or that you'll get a half-a**ed reply, because the reader didn't feel like wading through your verbosity to get to the goods.
"Ezine length" is generally about 9 kilobytes (9k) and above. You can usually tell how large an e-mail is before sending by checking its size in your mail program's outbox. If not, for your reference, 9k is about 650 words. (Yeesh!)
Unless the recipient is *expecting* a long reply from you, 3k (200 words) is a good stopping point for a first contact.
NOTE: YES, this goes for personal e-mails too. Being "friends" with someone isn't license to consistently disrespect their time with mammoth e-mails unless they send the same to you -- consistently.
So, no saying the same thing 8 killion different ways, or using "flowery" language and "pretty" mental pictures to get your point across.
Just say it, say something else and for Heaven's sake ... KEEP IT MOVING.
4. Umm, seriously ... is it really THAT important?
Ugh. Do I really need to explain this one? People who mark ALL of their messages High Priority remind me of the little dude who cried wolf, if you know what I mean.
When I consistently see these from the same people all the time, I start ignoring the priority and answering them LAST in a mail check, just to spite 'em.
Granted, not everyone is as crazy as me and will do this. But at the very least, you're still hurting your chances of getting a reply to *seriously* urgent messages quickly, by abusing priority markers.
»-«
I could go on. I won't.
(Yet.)
I'll save the rest for "Part 2." Until then, clean up your e-m
There are two types of people in the world. These are the rich who have money and those that don’t. When the person has money, there will be no problems going on a shopping spree in New York or hop on board a plane to see paradise in the Bahamas. The average Joe can also do that but will have to same that amount over a few months or even years.If the rich individual doesn’t do anything to preserve the wealth, this will soon disappear. This is the reason that being a venture capital investor se
"Ezine length" is generally about 9 kilobytes (9k) and above. You can usually tell how large an e-mail is before sending by checking its size in your mail program's outbox. If not, for your reference, 9k is about 650 words. (Yeesh!)
Unless the recipient is *expecting* a long reply from you, 3k (200 words) is a good stopping point for a first contact.
NOTE: YES, this goes for personal e-mails too. Being "friends" with someone isn't license to consistently disrespect their time with mammoth e-mails unless they send the same to you -- consistently.
So, no saying the same thing 8 killion different ways, or using "flowery" language and "pretty" mental pictures to get your point across.
Just say it, say something else and for Heaven's sake ... KEEP IT MOVING.
4. Umm, seriously ... is it really THAT important?
Ugh. Do I really need to explain this one? People who mark ALL of their messages High Priority remind me of the little dude who cried wolf, if you know what I mean.
When I consistently see these from the same people all the time, I start ignoring the priority and answering them LAST in a mail check, just to spite 'em.
Granted, not everyone is as crazy as me and will do this. But at the very least, you're still hurting your chances of getting a reply to *seriously* urgent messages quickly, by abusing priority markers.
»-«
I could go on. I won't.
(Yet.)
I'll save the rest for "Part 2." Until then, clean up your e-m
Is your management team able to protect proprietary information? You have to be in this day and age of Corporate Espionage. Not to mention the laws on identity theft. If you lose valuable employee personal information you could be sued or worse yet be sued by the government, as there are now rules and regulations that you must protect your company’s employees information.And failure to notify them even if it was a criminal act can get you in serious hot water with stupid little Justice D
4. Umm, seriously ... is it really THAT important?
Ugh. Do I really need to explain this one? People who mark ALL of their messages High Priority remind me of the little dude who cried wolf, if you know what I mean.
When I consistently see these from the same people all the time, I start ignoring the priority and answering them LAST in a mail check, just to spite 'em.
Granted, not everyone is as crazy as me and will do this. But at the very least, you're still hurting your chances of getting a reply to *seriously* urgent messages quickly, by abusing priority markers.
»-«
I could go on. I won't.
(Yet.)
I'll save the rest for "Part 2." Until then, clean up your e-mail act if you need to, and watch more of your e-mails not only get answered, but get answered faster -- and lots more productively, too.
Commit the above shameful offenses at your own risk!
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