National Clothesline

Lately, many cleaners have started using e-mail as a promotional and marketing tool. And while no one denies that e-mail is an efficient, low-cost means of communication, the fact is, many people who find themselves drowning in messages, often delete your correspondence without ever looking at it.

In spite of this fact, I believe strongly in the value of electronic mail both for business and personal use. It’s faster than a letter, less intrusive than a phone call and less hassle than a fax.

Unfortunately, since e-mail was first introduced some 20 years ago, many people have not learned to adjust their communication style in order to maximize the effectiveness of this relatively new medium.

According to a recent study by the Harvard Business School, you can significantly increase the chances that the e-mail you send actually gets read by following these simple rules.

1. Use a meaningful subject line to summarize your message.

Make your subject rich enough to convince your readers that your e-mail is real and relevant. People scan their e-mail inbox by subject. A subject line that pertains clearly to the message in your body copy will help people mentally shift to the proper context before they read your message.

There is one caveat, however. Be very careful not to use words that will be detected by a filter as constituting spam or junk. If filtered, your message will never stand a chance of even making it to the recipient.

2. Give your reader the full context at the start of your message.

If you happen to be initiating a conversation, making a pitch or presenting an important point of view, start off your messages with a reference to help orient your reader to what the message is about, such as “Regarding your recent article about…” or, “Here is a simple way to stretch your drycleaning budget.”

Get right to the point. Help orient your reader at the outset and they’ll be more likely to read what you have to say.

In most cases, the e-mail you send is important to you and you send it because you are deep in thought about something. Your reader is too; only the reader is deep in thought about something else.

Even worse, in a multi-person conversation, messages and replies may arrive out of order. It’s often confusing. And no, it doesn't help to include the entire past conversation when you reply. It’s rude to force someone else to wade through ten screens of messages because you're too lazy to give them context.

So, practice hi-lighting and deleting extraneous portions of e-mail messages and always start off your messages with enough context to orient your reader.

3. Make action requests clear.

If the purpose of your e-mail is to ask that something be done, say so specifically, especially if you are using this electronic medium to promote your cleaning business and you expect your prospect or customer to take action.

Don’t make the person guess. Clearly explain and summarize what you need or want them to do. If you don’t ask them to take action, they won’t. But a simple instruction such as “click here to request pick up and delivery service” is much more likely to get the intended response.

4. Limit your message to one page or less.

Make sure the meat of your e-mail is visible in the preview window of your recipient’s mailer. That means the first two paragraphs should have the meat.

Reading words off of a screen is not like reading from a printed page. It’s more difficult to read from a screen, which leads many people to print their e-mail so they can read more easily from paper. Tests prove that a majority of people would rather not read long copy from the computer screen.

As a matter of fact, many people never read past the first screen and very few read past the third.

So, if you have something important to say, get to the point right away then edit extensively after you’ve finished writing your first draft. Cut out as much as possible to keep the word count to a minimum.

In addition, try to make your paragraphs short. E-mail messages are frequently read in a document window with scrollbars. While scrollbars are nice, it makes it hard to visually track long paragraphs so consider breaking up paragraphs wherever possible and limiting them to a few sentences only.

When it comes to format, here’s a good rule. Keep everything short. Keep your lines short, keep your paragraph short and keep the message short.

Your competence with the English language, or lack of it, will turn people away more than anything else. If you have lots of misspellings, your subjects do not agree with your verbs, or you use incorrect wording, people may assume that you are uneducated.

From that, they may infer that you are not clever. It doesn’t matter that the correlation between language ability and intelligence is weak; lots of people will still make that inference anyway.

Furthermore, some people are literally insulted when they get e-mail that is riddled with errors, especially typographical errors. They feel it’s disrespectful to send mail with blatant mistakes. Using a spell checker is a simple first step to avoiding this problem.

Second, it’s also a good idea to pay attention to the grammar checker on your computer, as well. Although neither of these tools is perfect, they do offer a first step to producing a more professional appearance.

Finally, it’s wise to include a signature with any and all e-mail correspondence. First, it lets the reader know who the writer is and second, if you’ve included your phone number, fax number, web address and street address, it allows the reader several different options for future contact and response.

For example, my signature is:

Bill Bishop

Mak Marketing, Inc.

1141 N President Street

Wheaton, IL 60187

Phone: (630) 456-4195

Fax: (630) 456-4005

Mobile: (630) 602-4222

Whether you use e-mail for marketing or simply as a tool for communicating with friends and business associates, paying attention to these simple tips will make your messages easier to read and will bring you better results.