Many thanks for all the feedback we received for the first part of this article in the June 2010 issue of the Midlothian and East Lothian Chamber of Commerce magazine InCommerce. For all those who are gluttons for punishment here’s part two.
This time I’d like to give you an insight into some of those little email annoyances that drive me nuts and that we’ve all come across at some time or another. Even if you take a fairly casual approach to emails there are still a few do’s and don’ts that everyone should adhere to so that the people you’re sending them to stand a chance of wanting to open and then read them – otherwise, what’s the point?
Subject to it being interesting
If your email in-box is as full as mine every morning then, like me – and many others I suspect, you probably scan the subject lines for the most relevant or interesting looking ones before you go to the others. Quite often the ‘others’ don’t get read (or deleted) until later in the morning when there’s more time.
So, if you want your emails to get read first, make the subject lines either very relevant or extremely interesting. Oh, and what’s with the blank subject line emails? I don’t even bother to open those – straight into the bin.
Avoiding the junk folder
Blank subject lines are one way to make it to the junk or deleted folder but there are others. Very often quite innocent emails get flagged as spam by people’s email clients and end up with a one-way ticket to the bin. Sophisticated email clients will often pick on words, or phrases, which, in the context of your email, are quite innocent but if they appear on its internal naughty list, your message will be history.
So, what can you do?
Not that much unfortunately, however, if its a persistent problem with only one or two recipients then just call and ask them to put you on their email ‘safe’ or ‘white’ lists. The simplest way to do this on most programs is to put the offending incoming email address into the program’s address book.
Are you into email marketing?
Do you regularly send out to a large list? In this case if you’re messages are constantly being rejected, you could try using one of the online email marketing programs which have built in spam checkers such as www.mailchimp.com or www.aweber.com. These will check your messages for deliverability before you send them and tell you if there are any problems.
Test your emails and avoid playing Scrabble at the other end
The worst emails I receive are those that look like a 5-year old produced them (no insult intended to 5-year olds) because the sender has never bothered to see what their emails look like at the other end.
Now, you may be saying, “Come on Jon, I’m not going to test every email before I send it – that’s just daft”. I’m not suggesting you do, but test a couple now and again by sending them to people on different PC’s with different email clients and ask for their feedback. This might not be a problem with personal emails but in business you must do this – at least once.
The problem arises when you use tabs and spaces to format the content of emails to create tables for figures –sending a quote by email for instance – and everything looks dandy at your end. Unfortunately, the recipient is using a different email client with a different font and at a different size so all that careful formatting you took hours over is completely lost. Instead of impressing your customer, you end up sending a jumbled mess that annoys them rather than selling your product or service.
Attachments are a better option in this instance.
At the very least…
Spell check your emails! All Email clients these days include a spell checker – use it! Also, I know you like to practice your text-speak skills via email but I’d rather be able to understand what you’re trying to say. Oh, and did I mention spell checking?
Please – break the chain – please
Now we come to one of my favourite pet hates – daisy chain emails. They start out simple enough – you send someone an email… and they reply. Their message comes back and automatically below their message is a copy of your one. You reply… and below the new message automatically is a copy of the previous two messages and then they reply… with copies of… well, I think you get the picture. In an email conversation, its not long before there are any number of old messages trailing behind.
This feature is useful for tracking a conversation but after a few dozen replies it becomes extremely difficult to track anything – especially with all the intervening junk the emails automatically insert between each message.
Every so often – break the chain with a fresh email. Incidentally, have you ever printed one of these emails out late in the conversation and forgotten to specify just the first page? War and Peace ring any bells? Not very green!
Email confidential
Beware also the contents of some of those previous emails especially if it has been CC’d from someone else’s ‘chain’. I’ve been privy to some very interesting and useful information that I know the sender would prefer I had not seen because of this (Don’t be silly – of course I’m not going to tell you what it was).
Anonymous@somewhere.com
Does your business send out anonymous emails? “Of course not”, you say but are you so sure. We frequently receive quotes or electronic proofs via email from printers. These very often come from people we don’t normally have any contact with other than by email but for some reason they tend not to sign their emails with a name.
As I write this I have just received an email containing proofs from a rather large Scottish printer which has no subject line, no contact name, no call to action and came from an email address entitled prepress@————.com – and this from a company which is ISO 9001-2000 accredited!
Give people someone to respond to.
MY PERSONAL TOP 5 EMAIL GRIPES
A short list of the things that drive me nuts with some emails.
1. Don’t email me War & Peace! Keeping your emails short and to the point – why do you think Post-It notes and Twitter work so well?
2. Also, no long email signature and disclaimer messages please – I don’t like having to print out unnecessary pages.
3. Please avoid text-speak and messages full of abbreviations or acronyms you think I ought to know but probably don’t.
4. If you must send me emails with large attachments, please send a small one first to let me know what’s coming or to ask if its okay to do so.
5. And finally… DON’T USE BLOCKS OF CAPTIALS – I’M NOT DEAF OR BLIND SO YOU DON’T NEED TO SHOUT – OKAY!
I hope you enjoyed this short article and please, don’t take it too seriously.
If you would like to read more business articles like this please go to our website at www.studio9scotland.com and sign up for our regular bulletin and we’ll let you know whenever new ones are posted on our blog.
Jon Dalrymple
Studio 9 – Graphic Designers
121 Giles Street
Edinburgh
EH6 6BZ
T: (0131) 553 1000