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Email Style & Etiquette - Reply to the question

It is true we usually scan email messages rather than read them. 

This is no excuse, however, for overlooking the most important question asked within a business inquiry.

How much time is wasted repeating a question via email - I asked the question in the first email, my contact replied to my email without answering the question I asked.  So I need to reply again with the same question.

This is a business etiquette issue because it wastes the time and patience of your professional contacts.

Be reminded: Scan the ENTIRE email before replying.

Cool Marketing Resource - Social Media

It's the rage, there are webinars, seminars, white papers, and loads of tweets on how to use social media for marketing. 

I attended a presentation by Hillary Brown (@hillabean) on social media marketing strategies, and I am finally sold. 

There are two valid reasons to monitor and participate in social media marketing:

1) Search engine rankings - the more your brand appears online, the more likely your brand name will appear in search findings.

2) Viral marketing - the online form of word-of-mouth marketing.  If your business has flourished as a result of good customers talking good things about your business, those same good customers are now likely twittering, blogging, facebooking, and posting comments about your business. 

The tools exist to track your brand name across these social media platforms.  Want to know what people are saying about you?  Moreover, would you prefer to contribute to the positive image your brand name already enjoys?  Join Twitter, create a Facebook page, build a blog...

The time has come.

For more on social media marketing, keep up with Hillary Brown at www.lavarow.com

Ask a Question...

If you have been working with email marketing and have a question, or if you are considering adding email to your marketing strategy, use the comment feature below to ask a question! 

It's free, it's my advice based on my own experiences in email marketing, sales and management for 22 years now! 

Go ahead, ask...

Highlight of the Week - Twitter

I have figured out Twitter.  See me wade my way into the social waters at:

http://www.twitter.com/katwired

I plan to follow local social media expert Hillary Brown of Lava Row, international email marketing consultant Tamara Gielen, and Kenneth Yu.  Click their names to learn more about each Tweet.  Sign up with a community of Tweets to begin reading their Tweeps!

If you figure out how this will benefit marketing professionals, comment here!

Best Practices - Understanding SPF Records

Email servers, whether they are owned and operated by your corporate office or if they are Yahoo or MSN, are bound by rules and algorithms that determine the validity of the emails they receive.  Obviously a great focus in recent years has been on creating rules by which to sort out the unwanted emails.  By checking the actual behind-the-scenes "envelope" information of an incoming email, the receiving server decides if the sender if valid, forged, or possible SPAM - and all of this is automated.

Improving the success of your email deliveries requires an understanding of email authentication, and the main factor in this equation is your own email domain's SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record.  Read about SPF at www.openspf.org and follow the wizard under the heading Deploying SPF.

To check your record, go to to a helpful page at the Microsoft site: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/senderid/wizard/
and enter your domain name in the field on the right side of the screen.  This will bring up your SPF record if it exists. 

Best Practices - Targeting

One of the hardest concepts for small businesses to buy into is the idea of segmenting their target audience and building messages based on customer needs. 

Either time, technology or knowledge seems to hamper this type of true target marketing for smaller businesses. Email promotions or customer retention programs are usually sent out to one group all the same.  I know that large retailers and national service organizations are on board to segment their various audiences and then they can email more relevant messages and draw better results.

But what about small businesses?  If your house list is only 400 addresses, are you thinking you can treat those 400 individuals as one?  Think hard about those 400 individuals - are there even just a couple of significant characteristics that make half those business prospects unique?  If so, put those people into a group of their own and recreate your message to address that unique characteristic.  If you do, your message will more likely be opened and read!

For more on audience segmentation, see Stefan Pollard's Five Tips for Building Better Segments at http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=clickz_print&id=3630580

Cool Marketing Resource - Salesforce.com

I was a sales rep with a large international company for 15 years.  Managing the information flow to and from sales reps was a trick in and of itself.  And overseeing data collection and information flow from reps to customers was nearly impossible.

This has all changed in the past 5 years with new technologies and the creative use of Customer Relationship Management tools.

What is fantastic, as a sales rep AND an email marketing professional, is how we can integrate email programs with CRM tools, resulting in more timely communication, easier communciation management, and more satisfied and connected customers.

Triggered email, as defined at Webopedia.com, is: "Any email message that is automatically sent to a person based on an event..."  Triggered emails are created in advance and delivered as they are triggered.  The trigger can be a click at a web site, a relationship to a particular data field in a database (date of birth, for example), or any type of action within a customer relationship cycle.  Triggered emails are often "transactional" in nature, confirming a sale or a registration.  More and more, email marketing professionals are focusing on triggered one-to-one emails to implement marketing campaigns.  With our email solution, we can integrate a product update with a purchase confirmation, automate an annual renewal email or send an personalized offer based on a recent registration or purchase.

Our tool of choice for email marketing is ExactTarget, and the online sales tool of choice for our customers is Salesforce.com - which integrates seemlessly with ExactTarget.  See ExactTarget.com and Salesforce.com. 

Best Practices - Inbox Management

My Inbox is my best friend and my worst enemy all in the same.  I click to recieve emails with the anticipation of a child at Christmas, always expecting that new inquiry or happy customer or friendly invitation.  At the same time, it often feels like a spring rain that never stops, like the summer of 1993 in Iowa or the winter of 2008.

What is great is knowing I have a system for managing all of the messages. 

And my system has a lot in common with the manamgent strategy posted at the EEC recently.  For tips on how to better manage large quantities of email in your inbox, visit this list of "Inbox Managment Tips"
http://www.emailexperience.org/resources/inbox-management-tips/

Cool Marketing Resource - ExactTarget Seminar

ExactTarget's Route 1 to 1: The New eMarketing Essentials is heading your way!  More info >>

In addition to informative presentations, top industry experts and analysts will provide one-to-one marketing technology insight, and ExactTarget clients will share real-life examples of B2B and B2C email marketing success.

WinCommunications will be there in Chicago in May.  Look for the latest tips here at WinBlogger soon after the May seminar, and be sure to call 1-866-win-mail if you are interested in learning more about how to incorporate ExactTarget's tool into your marketing plan.

Best Practices - Good Business

I am impressed with the Hilton Corporation.  We are regulars at the Homewood Suites in Chicago and ever since our first stay, I have been an subscriber to the Hilton's email newsletter. What the Hilton does right is customer service, and their style of customer service is no longer surprising - for me it is the standard and the norm.

Of course, if I go online and make a reservation, I get an email receipt.  What's more, if I call in a reservation by phone, I also get an email receipt. 

In the receipt, I find details about the hotel location with a link to a map, as well as the weather and local events.

Their newsletter is published in very digestible size, with manageable frequency.

The hotel industry has other customer service queens - I liked something that the Minneapolis Radisson did for me back in February.  My reservation had been made 6 weeks prior to that visit, and the week before our stay the Radisson emailed me a reminder of my reservation.  That was handy to have, because once again it had the weather report - perfect for our ski trip and no icy roads!

These hotel chains are doing it right with email and customer service.  Take a lesson!