I have been thinking a lot about emails lately in terms of what makes them seem more personal and less like SPAM. It’s funny, but the more technology allows us to connect – even with true friends, colleagues, and customers (both internal and external), the more we risk alienating them with canned and HTML laden emails.
I know they’re sexy… but do you normally send personal emails loaded with graphics and HTML? If the answer is yes, then I suppose you can keep up the habit. However, if it hits my email box and we’ve just started our business relationship, it’s likely to be sent to the “circular file.”
For those of you who read this blog often, you know that I’m a fan of Seth Godin. I can’t say that everything he writes resonates with me, as I am sure that’s the case with you when my blog posts come along. However, Seth had some useful ideas to share regarding making emails more personal that I felt warranted repeating here.
- Don’t send the same email to large numbers of people.
- If you have more than a few people to contact, you’ll be tempted to copy and paste or mail merge. Don’t. You’ll get caught. It shows. If it’s important enough for someone to read, it’s important enough for you to rewrite.
- Careful with the salutation. Don’t write, “Dear Claudia,” if you don’t usually write “Dear” at the beginning of all your emails.
- Don’t mush the salutation together with the rest of the note. If I had a dollar for every email that started, “Joe, When experts come together…” That’s not personal. That’s lazy merging. See rule 1.
- Don’t send HTML or pictures. Personal email doesn’t, why are you?
- Don’t talk like a press release. Talk like a person. A person is reading this, so why are you talking like that?
- Be short. The purpose of an email is not to sell the person on anything other than writing back. If you don’t have a personal, interesting way to start a conversation, don’t write.
- Don’t send an email only when you really need something. That’s not personal, that’s selfish.
- Do you have a sig with a phone number in it? Your phone number? If you don’t trust me enough to give me your real phone number, I don’t trust you enough to read your mail.
- Don’t mark your email urgent. Urgent to you is not urgent to me.
- Don’t lie in your subject line, and don’t be cute. You’re not clever enough to be cute. Just be honest.
- Following up on an impersonal spam email is twice as dumb as sending the first one. Invest the time to do it right the first time.
- Anticipated, personal and relevant permission mail will always dramatically outperform greedy short-term spam. I promise.
- Just because you have someone’s email address doesn’t mean you have the right to email them.
What I took away from these points is that yes, mass emails may streamline your efforts – keeping your communications channel running smoothly. However, if emails to clients, colleagues, and customers come across as impersonal, you lose credibility.
What we should focus on is adding a bit gunk to our email works… as Seth puts it, adding some friction back into the mix.
If you want to be seen as being personal, the best strategy is to be personal, which is slow and expensive.
I hope you found this post useful! As always, if you or anyone you know is in need of a local Florida mortgage loan originator, I’m your guy. Call me at 888-859-7418 or apply online for your Florida mortgage. We’ll keep you posted and let you know when it’s time to pull the trigger!
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