{"id":598,"date":"2009-04-04T08:54:38","date_gmt":"2009-04-03T22:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/?p=598"},"modified":"2013-07-02T12:55:36","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T02:55:36","slug":"sales-emails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2009\/04\/sales-emails\/","title":{"rendered":"Sales emails"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4847\" style=\"width: 248px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/thumb_down.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4847\" class=\" wp-image-4847\" title=\"thumb_down\" alt=\"unsuccessful gesture of thunbs down\" src=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/thumb_down.jpg\" width=\"238\" height=\"147\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4847\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An impersonal email got the thumb down from me<\/p><\/div>\n<p>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 &#8220;USB Inquiry&#8221; 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).<\/p>\n<p>From that email, I spotted\u00a0a number of\u00a0tips for writing a good sales letter\/email:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>make your <a title=\"Content and message must match\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2011\/12\/content-and-message-must-match\/\">subject match the content<\/a>. I wouldn&#8217;t have read the above email by the subject as it appeared to be asking me about USB keys which I don&#8217;t sell. A better subject would have appealed to my need for a USB key rather than asking me about them (inquiry meaning question)<\/li>\n<li>check the <a title=\"Make your offers relevant\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2012\/08\/make-your-offers-relevant\/\">relevance of your offer<\/a> 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&#8217;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&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>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<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve said it before, but <a title=\"What\u2019s in a name?\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2007\/10\/whats-in-a-name\/\">use the person&#8217;s name<\/a> &#8211; it is the most important word in their language. &#8220;Hello,&#8221; isn&#8217;t good enough and finding a name off a good website isn&#8217;t that hard.<\/li>\n<li>The paragraphs start &#8216;Could you&#8230;&#8217;, &#8216;My company&#8230;&#8217;, &#8220;We can&#8230;&#8217;, &#8220;please visit&#8230;&#8217; and &#8220;Thank you&#8230;&#8217; Every starting point is asking me to do something or talks about them. Where&#8217;s the appeal to me, the message that I am going to benefit from this purchase?<\/li>\n<li>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. &#8216;We want to contact your marketing person to explain&#8230;&#8217;)<\/li>\n<li>Check your sentences say what you want them to. This email included this gem &#8220;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!&#8221; So we don&#8217;t offer custom shaped drives but we will make any shape you tell us &#8211; doesn&#8217;t inspire a lot of trust&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>The email finished with &#8220;We offer\u00a0non &#8211; profit organizations, schools and charities a discounted rate, so please be sure to mention that for even better pricing.&#8221; That&#8217;s nice, but as I&#8217;m not a school, charity or non-profit group it doesn&#8217;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 <a title=\"The value of clear communications!\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2008\/07\/the-value-of-clear-communications\/\">message relevant and clear<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>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&#8217;d bet that if I dialed it exactly as is I wouldn&#8217;t get her!<\/li>\n<li>Build trust. This email came from an email address that doesn&#8217;t match the email given in her signature or the URL she includes which makes me wonder <a title=\"Be professional with the little things\u2026\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2011\/06\/be-professional-with-the-little-things\/\">why she didn&#8217;t use the company email address<\/a> and makes me very suspicious.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course, even had she written a much better email, I still wouldn&#8217;t buy from her as I hate spammers and she didn&#8217;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&#8217;d have been more likely to buy from her?<\/p>\n<p>At least you know what to avoid when you next write a sales letter!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<address><a title=\"Royalty free images\" href=\"http:\/\/www.123rf.com\/#avsuper\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">*Photo courtesy of 123rf<\/span><\/a><\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &#8220;USB Inquiry&#8221; and the content was five paragraphs telling me how they could sell me USB keys for my customers (with my logo and presentation on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,60],"tags":[222,905,229,625,1721],"class_list":["post-598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-writing-examples","category-writing","tag-email","tag-letter","tag-relevant","tag-sales","tag-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5982,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions\/5982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}