Page 99 - Duct Tape Marketing

83Chapter 6: Projecting the Right Image

Managing a few trillion e-mail impressions

Sometime in the late 1990s (sounds like ancient history, doesn’t it?), the
number of e-mail messages eclipsed the volume of traditional letters sent by
businesses. Yet while traditional correspondence is routinely formatted,
proofread, printed, and filed, e-mail messages are sent spontaneously, often
with no standard policy and rarely with a company record for future referral.

Such an informal approach to e-mail is fine as long as your staff member is
simply sending a thank-you note or a quick update to a customer. But what if
the message includes a fee estimate? Or a notice that client-requested changes
will result in an additional thousand dollars of expense? And what if the staff
member is no longer with your company when the customer questions the bill?

For the sake of your business, set a few e-mail guidelines:

ߜ Unify all company e-mails by use of a common signature. A signature
or sig consists of a few lines of text that show up at the end of every
e-mail message. Usually it includes the name of the person sending the
message, a tag line that tells what your business does, your Web site
address, your street address, and your phone number. You can create a
signature in almost any e-mail program. Go to the help function for
instructions.

ߜ Set a tone and style for e-mail messages. In well-managed businesses,
traditional letters go out on letterhead, are printed in a consistent type-
face, and use a consistent style and clear, professional language.
Consider e-mail a dressed-down version of your formal correspondence.
It can be more relaxed and more spontaneous, and it can (and should)
be more to the point — but it can’t be impolite or unprofessional.

ߜ Respond to e-mail within 24 hours. People expect a different level of
response to e-mail than to other forms of correspondence. An e-mail that
isn’t answered promptly falls into the category of phone calls that are
placed on endless hold or customers who wait in three-minute lines. The
customer service impact is devastating. Answer e-mails quickly, even if
it’s a one-line note offering a complete answer within a week.

ߜ Establish a system to print and file e-mails that contain any form of
pricing or delivery promise.

Before you hit the Send button

Measure your e-mail policies against these standards:

ߜ Keep messages short and use paragraph breaks to avoid the visual
dread of a long block of type.

ߜ Add punctuation, but use it sparingly. E-mail messages seem to come in
two types: the kind that includes no punctuation or the kind that sprin-
kles punctuation like salt. Sentences that begin with capital letters and