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I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential. Read, subscribe to my newsletter, enjoy!Tash

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Tash is a professional writer who loves helping people communicate clearly and effectively.

How not to start an email

I just received some spam which started with:

You are receiving this email becasue we wish you to use our Website Design Services.

Did someone really think that approach was going to win them any business? They went on to explain about their company and what they offer (so say their subheadings anyway – I didn’t read it!) but frankly who cares?

What’s wrong with this opening?

  • there is no attempt to be polite or engage me as a human being, let alone being personal
  • there is no attempt to gain my interest
  • there is no attempt to show any understanding of my issues, let alone suggestions of how they can help solve them
  • they didn’t even take enough time to check the spelling in the first line of their email! How can I trust their attention to detail?
  • they attempt to further their importance by using capital letters when describing their services – unnecessary capitals of course
  • and the big one – how does what they wish have any relevance to me or me receiving unwanted emails?

So when starting emails, remember it is a person reading it so write to them!

Exclusively present at how many places?

I recently saw a sign on the back of a bus that included  “available exclusively at no other department stores”.

It left me wondering was it exclusive to the advertiser or not? It  was the only department store stocking the product but it could well be available at other places which means it wasn’t exclusive at all!

Let’s look at what exclusive really means…

exclusive: entirely, not shared or including others
The reporter had an exclusive story as the witness spoke only to her.

Exclusive is an absolute term so it can’t be qualified – that is, something is exclusive or it isn’t, there is no middle option. “I’ll give you and the other TV stations an exclusive interview” and “the exclusive club is open to everyone” don’t make sense.

Adverse or averse?

 With only one letter different and both words having a negative aspect, adverse and averse are easily conufsed if you aren’t careful.

adverse: not in your best interests, unfavourable
She had an adverse reaction to the new medicine.

averse: strongly against or opposed; turn away
He is averse to opening a new branch in Sydney.

verse: text with metre and rythym, such as in poetry or a section of a song
The second verse is my favourite part of the song.

Fewer uses of less?

Words with similar meanings can easily be used in the wrong context, which does not give a good impression of the writer and also doesn’t help to keep the specific meanings of words. Did you know that ‘fewer’ and ‘less’ are often used in the wrong way?

fewer: not as many items (i.e. relates to things you can count)
There are fewer tasks on my to do list now

less (or less than): not as much of something (i.e. relates to a collective noun)
Antibiotics resulted in less disease after WWII.

ANZAC remembrance

Yesterday was Anzac Day so I thought of how often I have seen remembrance misspelt. It is an important word that is part of common speech even though most of us don’t use it very often aside from near Anzac and Remembrance Days.

The other ‘word’ to be aware of is Anzac…

Anzac stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps so we would generally write it as the acronym ANZAC; however, we only capitalise the first letter as specified in The Protection of the Word “Anzac” Regulations (administered by the Minister for Veteran’s Affairs).

What phase fazes you?

 Here is an interesting pair of similar sounding words – I haven’t often seen faze written (and never misused) but perhaps that is because not many people know how to spell or use it?

faze: to worry or scare
The weather predictions didn’t appear to faze anyone at the campsite.

phase: a specific time or stage in a sequence
He is in the drafting phase of the annual report.

 

Newsletter subscribers

How often do you look at or work on your newsletter subscriber list?

How often do you think people should review such lists?

The frequency of sending emails obviously affects those answers, as does how you send emails out (some email software/services will do some of the checking for you).

When reviewing subscriber lists, here are some things to look for:

  • if you get any requests to be unsubscribed, do so immediately – certainly before sending the next email. Having this step automated is great for you and subscribers
  • any emails that repeatedly bounce (i.e. keep being sent back to you because they can’t be delivered) need to be removed form your list. Yes, you could keep them on the list so it appears bigger, but there are some good reasons to delete them
    • you will probably get bounce emails every time you send an email – why cause more email clutter for yourself?
    • ISPs actually track the proportion of bounced emails you send out – if you keep sending a lot of bouncing emails, they will block your newsletters
  • monitor the turnover of your list, not just the size. For example, if you have 100 subscribers in January and February it looks great but if 50 subscribed in February it means that half your January subscribers unsubscribed which is not so great
  • if you have stats available, monitor how many are being read, forwarded and so on
  • look at how your list is broken down by whatever information you have available – male vs female, states or countries, html vs plain text, etc

And remember to never subscribe anyone without their permission – it is just bad manners as well as risking your reputation.

Maternity leave…

After today, I am officially on maternity leave!

My baby is due next week so I am having a few days to rest before hand (of course, babies being babies, there may be no rest period but we’ll see what happens!)

While I will be taking maternity leave from writing projects, I will return to blog posts and answering emails in a few weeks.

If you comment on the blog or send me any other messages, please be patient and I will respond as soon as I can.

Newsletter spam and advertisers

If you send out a newsletter, or other email marketing materials, one of the biggest issues you face is getting the message through spam and related filters.

As well as choosing your words carefully to avoid being classed as spam, you also need to watch what advertising you add to your newsletter.

Setting rules on the type of advertising you accept is a different topic, but it is also important to check what words any advertisers use – you don’t want to put time into adjusting your words just to have many spam triggers in ads. Ensure your advertisers understand you have editorial control over their ads, although major changes need their approval.

Apparently you also need to be aware of how your advertisers are viewed online. That is, if you include an advertiser’s URL that has been blacklisted by ISPs for sending spam, your newsletter could also be filtered out.

Some sites that help identify blacklisted email senders are:

MX Toolbox (based on server IP addresses)
Abusive hosts blocking list(based on host name or IP address)
DNS Stuff (based on DNS servers – not free)
Black List Monitoring (based on IP address)

* I don’t know that these are the best, but if they help you avoid being blacklisted (or recover from being blacklisted) they may be worth a try!

Making content web friendly

Websites are about information so it makes sense that you need to provide good content if you want your website to be successful.

Obviously, a site with fantastic content that is hard to find can only have limited success so there needs to be a balance between the content and the site itself being user friendly.

Without going into web design aspects of a site, here are some of my top tips for making your web content usable and attractive:

  1. keep each page focussed and a reasonable length (300 to 500 words is usually ideal). If there is additional information that could potentially help some site visitors, put it on a new page and link to it rather than putting everything into one page.
  2. use headings and sub-headings. There are a number of reasons for this – it makes the text visually more apepaling, is easier to skim read, helps focus and define sections of text and can help with search engines (especially if you use heading styles rather than manually adding font styles).
  3. use white space. For example, I am adding an empty line between each of these bullet points so it is easier to see the difference between them and the page doesn’t look so text heavy.
  4. don’t feel your website has to explain everything. I have had many clients who put too much information into their text ‘just in case’ a client wants to know those details. People get bored and/or overwhelmed by too much details, especially on websites, so keep it simple by giving the important details. You can always link to the fine details or encourage them to contact you for them.
  5. web content is not like a novel, or even a school essay, so get to the point fast. A beautiful introduction may be very nice but will frustrate someone who is trying to decide if you can provide the service/product they are after. If a long introduction and sales pitch means the real informatoin is so low on the page you have to scroll to read it, you can bet not many people will actually read it.
    So prioritise your information and put the important bits first.
  6. Keep your content fresh, up-to-date and error-free. Spend some of your website maintenance time adding new content and reviewing the current site (for instance, when did you last check for faulty links on your site?)
  7. Write for human beings, not search engines. That means don’t add too many keywords and concentrate on providing useful information rather than trying to impress a search engine.