We have thousands of sheets of our high-quality company letterhead and beautiful matching envelopes stored in our supply closet. Designed in-house, our stationary is full color, embossed, and printed on expensive paper that reflects the essence of who and what we feel we are to our clients. Unfortunately, many of our clients rarely see it as we use email as our chief means of written communication.
It takes us less time to send an email than a letter. We can copy multiple people who need to share in and be aware of the information or content we are sending, it is virtually immediate, reduces our cost of communicating, can move things forward quickly, clarifies and confirms phone communications faster than traditional correspondence, can provide potential customers the information they need to make a buying decision and thus move the critical path of selling along at a faster rate, and email generally increases our efficiency and improves the management of our time for the benefit of our clients.
While email clearly has numerous benefits, there are some considerations that you should take under advisement as you craft and send out emails to clients, colleagues, friends, and others to avoid embarrassment, potential lawsuits, or mis-communication:
1. Emails are NEVER private. EVER. If you send something out, it can, and often will be, shared with someone else, possibly multiple people, in a very short period of time. Never, ever, put anything in an email that you would not want to see plastered on the front page of the local newspaper.
2. Stay away from any comments or observations that can open you up to a law suit. See rule number 1 above.
3. Remember that once you hit the send button, your email can't be retrieved. Someone will get it, share it, and it will exist in the virtual world forever. Don't let your words come back to haunt you.
4. Sometimes things are best said face-to-face. Don't hide behind and email or allow an email to take the place of a personal encounter. Never deliver bad news via email.
5. Guard your written tone. Since your reader may take your email literally, sarcasm and humor in the written word are often best left to professional writers. Keep your tone clear, and if in doubt, have someone else read a printed copy (Rule 3) prior to hitting the send button. I like to save critical communications as drafts and come back later to relook at the content and get a fresh perspective.
6. With the spam filters and glitches that occur daily in our virtual world, important communications should also be delivered via an alternate means of communication, either by phone or traditional mail to ensure delivery. Additionally, remember that many people do not check their email daily, so be aware of this if your email contains time-sensitive deadlines, dates of appointments or scheduled meetings.
7. Always use spell checker. and remember that spell checker can only do so much. Words like write and right, their and there, weather and whether, among many others, are overlooked by spell checker. You MUST proof your work prior to hitting send.
8. If you struggle with grammar, craft your e-message in a Word document first, run a grammar check, then copy and paste. Use traditional sentence structures, avoid all caps, smiley faces, font colors other than blue or black, hard to read fonts, etcetera in your business communications.
9. Keep your tone professional and business-like when communicating with clients or potential clients. Save the jokes and casual tone for family and friends.
10. Do not provide any information in an email that is subject to change without providing a clear disclaimer that the offer or content may change without notice. Examples of this would be pricing, availability, terms, etcetera.
We hope these tips will help you to refine and polish your communication skills in the virtual world.
Happy Marketing!
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