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
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!
Ranking for childcare?
You have to laugh really – I mean, how can I take people seriously when they send spam that is so off target?
Let me share the laugh with you!
I received an email from someone who tried to be my friend and show how good he is at internet marketing – mind you, he isn’t good enough to find my name on my website and use it in an email! He does point out that he has my contact details, including phone number, from my site though.
This email was about word constructions – a professional writing service in Australia and his email includes the following (in blue – the black text is my response!):
I see that you’re not ranked on the first page of Google for a childcare centre search. And this is a problem for me why?
I’m not sure if you’re aware of why you’re ranked this low but more importantly how easily correctable this is. I’m guessing it’s because I don’t have a childcare centre or use that keyword? If he found me through that keyword, it says a lot for my childcare articles though!
There’s no reason you can’t have a top three ranking for the keyword childcare centre based on your site structure and content. You have a very nice site. Perhaps the fact I don’t have a childcare centre (or a website about childcare) is a good reason not to rank top three? And if you don’t know that, I have no reason whatsoever to believe you have looked at my site to know it’s good!
I didn’t send this email out to very many people (oh please!) but I am currently reaching out to a list of your ‘keyword competitors’ (If their keyword is ‘childcare centre’, they aren’t my competitors at all) as well. But I do favor your website because I can see your website monetizing the targeted website traffic the keyword childcare centre can deliver. If you truly believe my site is best placed to maximise this keyword, you REALLY have no idea about relevant content and keywords – and I REALLY don’t want to make use of your ‘help’ and ‘skill’.
He followed this up with four requests to call me, and one to call him. Sure, Jason, call me so I can tell you how little you really know, at your long distant phone cost!
Hopefully that gave you a laugh, too.
If you want a serious message from this, here are some real marketing tips:
- be relevant – don’t contact a business about something they don’t offer
- be honest – adding blatant lies makes it likely you’ll be caught out and lose whatever credibility you may have had
- if you claim to have viewed my site, then have the courtesy to find and use my name
- don’t overstate your importance – if Jason is so successful and owns the 1,000s of sites he claims, why does he need to spam people around the world to get further business? Again, it just destroys your credibility if your claims and behaviours don’t match
Here’s to lots of laughs and very little spam in our lives!
Give options that make sense
I have written before about the need to use clear questions in surveys to get meaningful results, and given some tips on how to write such questions. Every time I do a survey with poor questions I cringe – do they really not care about getting good results or just don’t understand that not everyone knows what they are really asking?
One of the most common questions I have seen in online surveys is the following:
Are you …
male
female?
Technically, the answer is yes – I am male or female and so is every other human I know of! Fairly pointless question to ask unless you have a third group responding.
In this case, we can see what is really being asked (“which are you?”) and the available answers lead us to answering correctly, but it isn’t always so easy.
It was great recently to be asked to help a major research centre refine their questionnaire. They had determined the questions they wanted to ask but understood that how they asked was critical to the final result of their research.
So if you are preparing surveys or questionnaires, my two key tips are:
- read the questions to make sure the options answer the question and suit your needs
- get at least one other person to read the questions to ensure they make sense to a less involved pair of eyes
Use your words wisely!
One little letter…
One little letter can make a huge difference.
I have just come across an example of why it is critical to proof read everything before you publish it, and why attention to details such as spelling and grammar are important.
Actually, I first saw this site about 8 months ago and they still haven’t noticed or corrected it. I had forgotten it but for my amusement I’m glad it was still there!
In the header of every page of the site, they have used an a instead of u in their tagline. One little letter could be a simple typo, of course, but your tagline and header are the first things people notice! And in this case, it doesn’t look like a typo as it makes a real word which gives a VERY different meaning.
The tagline in the header is “Pass a drag test no sweat” which instantly brings to mind men dressing as women (testing to see if they are real drag queens is perhaps unusual but I guess we don’t want people pretending to be in drag?)
Elsewhere, they use the tagline “Pass a drug test no sweat” which related to the fact they sell “products is removing unwanted substances from your body and provides for quick detoxification of your organism.”
I’m not going to touch the rights and wrongs of passing drug tests this way, but it is clear that there is a huge difference between drag and drug.
So check your work carefully and don’t just rely on spell checks to get your work correct.
Use your words wisely!
Clear titles
I recently read an article with a ridiculous heading. It claimed that the majority of Australians were victims of internet scams. As I have never been such a victim, I doubted the title and read the article (ok, so a ridiculous title did work in terms of getting a reader!)
What they really meant was most Australians have been exposed to internet scams, or had the opportunity to be taken in by such a scam. They then quoted that about 13% of people have actually been hurt by a scam.
Their title was misleading and dishonest really, and totally reduced their credibility in my eyes – I’m not planning on returning to their articles.
Titles and headings are important – they need to attract attention, set the topic for the article and work as part of your brand. In short pieces, the title also has to prove its worth in giving part of the message.
Use your words wisely, and honestly!
Clear definitions…
I looked at a website today that is trying to explain technical terms to enhance their sales – a good concept of course, but if the definitions aren’t clear I think they’d be better off without them.
This is pretty much the first thing on their site:
What is “Domain Name”?
Compared with IP address, Domain Name is a character sign which is like a doorplate number on internet, it’s used to identify and orient hiberarchy of computer on internet.
Ok, English isn’t their first language, but their site is in English so it needs to be understandable in English! Even if we change ‘hiberarchy’ to ‘heirarchy’ it still doesn’t help explain a domain name – and I actually know what a domain name is!
Moral of this story – make sure a definition is easier than the term it is meant to explain! I suggest using the simplest words possible when writing definitions so people can concentrate on the definition rather than the words you use.
P.S. Try my article for a longer but simpler explanation of domain names.
Sales emails
An impersonal email got the thumb down from me
There was no reason for me to read some spam I received recently, but it was top of my spam folder and I glanced at it. The subject was “USB Inquiry” and the content was five paragraphs telling me how they could sell me USB keys for my customers (with my logo and presentation on the USB key).
From that email, I spotted a number of tips for writing a good sales letter/email:
- make your subject match the content. I wouldn’t have read the above email by the subject as it appeared to be asking me about USB keys which I don’t sell. A better subject would have appealed to my need for a USB key rather than asking me about them (inquiry meaning question)
- check the relevance of your offer to the person receiving the email. Why would I buy USB keys from the USA? There are perfectly good USB keys in Australia and they would cost me less in time and freight. If I’m wrong, they could have explained that in the email. The .com.au part of my web address is a clue that I am not in the USA…
- relate the offer to the person. A USB key could be useful for me, but a more targeted response would have suggested I put client documents on a branded USB key instead of a plain disc or compile some templates or articles to hand out to prospective clients. They just assumed I did presentations that have notes suitable to a USB key. A serious sales proposition would be based on my needs, not a generalisation
- I’ve said it before, but use the person’s name – it is the most important word in their language. “Hello,” isn’t good enough and finding a name off a good website isn’t that hard.
- The paragraphs start ‘Could you…’, ‘My company…’, “We can…’, “please visit…’ and “Thank you…’ Every starting point is asking me to do something or talks about them. Where’s the appeal to me, the message that I am going to benefit from this purchase?
- The email opens with a request to direct her to the marketing person but then continues as if I am the marketing person. If you request a name, wait for that answer or at least link into the remaining information (e.g. ‘We want to contact your marketing person to explain…’)
- Check your sentences say what you want them to. This email included this gem “We are not offering rush production services, and custom shape USB flash drives, you tell us the shape you want your flash drive to be, we will make if for you!” So we don’t offer custom shaped drives but we will make any shape you tell us – doesn’t inspire a lot of trust…
- The email finished with “We offer non – profit organizations, schools and charities a discounted rate, so please be sure to mention that for even better pricing.” That’s nice, but as I’m not a school, charity or non-profit group it doesn’t help me much; then again, the email says mention their discounted rate for better pricing and I could mention it easily enough! The lesson again is make the message relevant and clear.
- Ensure your contact details are easy to use. This woman gave me a phone number without any area (or country) code and no address so how can I ring her? I’d bet that if I dialed it exactly as is I wouldn’t get her!
- Build trust. This email came from an email address that doesn’t match the email given in her signature or the URL she includes which makes me wonder why she didn’t use the company email address and makes me very suspicious.
Of course, even had she written a much better email, I still wouldn’t buy from her as I hate spammers and she didn’t meet legal requirements of including her address. Would you have ordered any USB keys from such an email? Had she followed my tips do you think you’d have been more likely to buy from her?
At least you know what to avoid when you next write a sales letter!
*Photo courtesy of 123rf
Learning from SEO spam
Last week, I wrote about SEO offer spam emails. Having just received another one of these annoying emails, I thought I’d give some examples of why I don’t trust them…
We can put your site at the top of a search engines listings. If this is something you might be interested in, send me a reply with the web addresses you want to promote and the best way to contact you with some options.
Sincerely,
First Last
So what is wrong with this email?
- no greeting is rude. Even if he didn’t want to take the time to research my name, he could have said “Hello” at the minimum
- who is he? There was no other information to help me identify his business or contact him except by reply email
- if he doesn’t know what my website is (so how did you email me then?) how can he be sure he can help my rankings improve? Maybe I’m already at the top, maybe it’s a family site I don’t care about rankings for, maybe a thousand different things that mean his service is not relevant
- what does he mean by ‘top of a search engine listings’ anyway? Top of page 10 in Google is still top but not something I aspire to! Top for an irrelevant or obscure keyword won’t help me either. By not being clear, he missed an opportunity to show me he knows what he is talking about and starting some trust.
- where is he located? Yes, we could deal via email which means his location isn’t too important, but knowing he is overseas helps understand time differences. Further, I would be more likely to hire an Australian as they understand my market better and I don’t have to deal with the dollar value.
Whilst I hope you don’t send out spam to get business, the above tips will hopefully help you avoid answering spam like this and help you write better sales emails.
Use your words wisely!
The value of clear communications!
I have recently being working through a training book (as a student, not a writer) and found various bits hard to understand. Luckily, I have a group of people around me who have been able to help interpret some of the questions – and I have interpreted other bits for them! I would hate to be struggling through it alone!
One question I thought I understood and prepared an answer for – it took me half an hour or so to get it finished and involved someone else getting some restricted information for me.
At the training course itself, my tutor read through my bookwork and pointed out that the question above was not correctly answered – it was asking for something else entirely. With that knowledge, I could just see what the question meant but it was a struggle! So I rewrote my answer – taking another two hours to do so.
A simpler example from the same training weekend was “Collect the names, titles and contact details for everyone in the training team.” I therefore wrote a list of names, titles and email addresses for the other members of my team on the course (we worked in teams throughout the course.) I then realised what they really wanted was a list of the names, titles and contact details for the trainers themselves – THE training team, rather than my training team!
Clearer questions would have saved me the stress of worrying I knew what to answer, the confusion of having no clue what to answer at times and the time of having to rewrite some answers. So a very concrete example of how useful clear communications are!
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