Saturday, December 14, 2013

How to ask for something in an email

 
 










The following is an excerpt from an article by Jocelyn K. Glei  on www.99u.com This area has been covered in some of earlier blogs. This compilation is very well done and I did want to make it available to my readers. Asking for something in an email is a very delicate process. There are considerations which touch upon each and every part of an email, including tone, timing and placement of message elements.  The ramifications can be long ranging and far reaching.

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One of the golden rules of writing is: Respect the reader’s intelligence. This rule gets magnified by a factor of 10 when it comes to composing unsolicited emails.
Most people who receive any significant quantity of email in a day have developed extremely refined bullshit detectors. They can identify an impersonal template email in 0.5 seconds, and they can spot a time-wasting “let’s explore the possibilities” ask from a mile off.
In short, getting someone that you don’t know to pay attention to you—and respond—is a delicate art. One that requires craftsmanship, charm, concision, and a lot of self-editing.
Based on years of drafting, redrafting, observation, and misfires, here are a few pointers to keep in mind when composing an email “ask”:
Step 1: Make it easy to say, “Yes.”
When it comes to giving good email, making it easy to say “Yes!” is objective number one. Sadly, it’s also where most people fall down on the job.
I frequently receive emails from people who are interested in some sort of knowledge exchange but never clarify how they would like for me to take action. Do they want to have a coffee? Do they want to do a phone call? It’s unclear, which means that instead of saying, “Yes!” I have to respond by asking them what they’re asking me for in the first place. Or, not respond at all.
If you are asking someone to take the time to answer you, it should be very clear what you are asking for. Look at your email and ask yourself: “Can the recipient say ‘Yes’ without further discussion?”  If the answer is yes, you’re doing well. If not, you need to redraft.
Step 2: Write an intriguing subject line. 
Composing a good email subject line is akin to writing a great headline. If you’re cold-emailing someone you’ve never met, it’s important to strike a balance between being direct and being interesting.
If I were asking someone to speak at our annual 99U Conference, for instance, I might use a subject like: “Jessica + Behance’s 99U Conference?” (Analysis: Using someone’s name feels personal; mentioning Behance in addition to 99U gives more chance of name recognition; and the question mark gives a sense of possibility/ creates curiosity.)
Keep in mind that while it’s always good to be clear, you also don’t want to give anyone a reason to dismiss your email before reading it. For that reason, you’ll want to avoid stock or cookie-cutter phrases that might get your email lumped in (and glossed over) with others.
For instance, for a speaker ask for the 99U Conference, I typically avoid run-of-the-mill phrases like “speaking opportunity” or “speaking invitation,” because they can turn people off before they’ve really assessed my particular opportunity.
Step 3: Establish your credibility.
“Why should I care?” is the tacit question hovering in most people’s minds every time they open an email from someone they don’t know. This is why establishing your credibility is crucial. Tell your reader why you are different, why you are accomplished, and why they should pay attention to you.
If I’m contacting someone about contributing to 99u.com, I might share stats on our monthly page views and social media reach to do this. If the ask is related to one of our events, I would share audience size, years sold out, and a power-list of past speakers.
If you don’t have “data points” to share, you can also establish credibility by being a keen observer of the person you are contacting; you could tell them how long you’ve followed their work, how you enjoyed the last blog post they wrote, etc. As long as it’s not fawning, most people appreciate being noticed.
“Why should I care?” is the tacit question hovering in most people’s minds every time they open an email from someone they don’t know. 
Step 4: Be concise & get to the point.
Never assume that someone is going to read your entire email. You should make it clear from the get-go exactly what you are asking for. That means clarifying why you’re reaching out in the first sentence or two, and no later.
However, sometimes everything you need to say can’t be explained in 1-3 sentences. If this is the case for your ask, go ahead and say your piece (as concisely as you can) but assume your reader will be skimming it. This means using bolding, bullet pointing, and so forth as much as possible.
If it’s necessary to give some backstory prior to the ask, I like to just go ahead and break out the ask in paragraph two with a bolded preface that reads, “The Ask:” If you’re asking for something, there’s no point in beating around the bush. Make your objective clear.
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Great news!

My book is now atop the Amazon Netiquette list. Please go to Amazon and search for "netiquette" . There is a wonderful review from Kirkus as well.

Remember you can subscribe to receiving notifications when new blogs are posted:http://netiquetteiq.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
 

About Netiquette IQ

My book, "Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email" and the Kindle version are now available on Amazon. Please visit my author profile at

amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

#PaulBabicki
#netiquette  

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Common spam subjects














Today's blog is a simple matrix of malicious spam messages whether they are intended to harm one's computer or do financial harm. Obviously, emails of this sort should never be opened, stored or forwarded.

Partial listing of dangerous emails

        The following categories represent common themes for email spammers and should be ignored.

True Emails
Virus Email Hoaxes
Giveaway Email Hoaxes
Charity Hoaxes
Bogus Warnings
Email Petitions and Protests
Emal Chain Letters
Celebrity Email Hoaxes
Prank Emails
Bad Advice Emails
Funny Email Hoaxes
Unsubstantiated Emails
Missing Child Email Hoaxes
Phishing Scams
Nigerian Scams
Payment Transfer Job Scams
Email Lottery Scams
Miscellaneous
Scams
Pharming Scams
Internet Dating Scams
Computer Security
Virus Information
Email Security
Spam Control

_______________________________________________________________________

Today's question/fact.

According to Google trends, email is more popular than:

1.) Elvis

2.) Chocolate

3.) Beer

4.) Harry Potter

5.) All of the above

The correct answer is #5

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Great news!

My book is now atop the Amazon Netiquette list. Please go to Amazon and search for "netiquette" . There is a wonderful review from Kirkus as well.

Remember you can subscribe to receiving notifications when new blogs are posted:http://netiquetteiq.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
 

About Netiquette IQ

My book, "Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email" and the Kindle version are now available on Amazon. Please visit my author profile at

amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

#PaulBabicki
#netiquette  




Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Personalization in email


 

 

 

 

 Familiarity in email correspondence


Personalization in email is a delicate matter. One should always try to add some form of uniqueness to messages. This is evidenced by the chart above. However, the way this is achieved is really important and some of the key items are noted below.

        Extended business correspondence or interaction might become friendlier and less formal over time. These business friendships lend themselves to bits of personal information being exchanged. Such relationships and the knowledge they bring can be very useful in building rapport, trust, and better business success. Netiquette certainly includes asking and conveying niceties, some more specific than others. Emails conveying a good balance are preferable and typically more effective.

        There are inherent pitfalls in writing about personal topics. One of the most obvious of these is depicting personal information not known to other recipients, some of whom may be total strangers. Another drawback is that any third party might be uncomfortable, or deem unprofessional, having anything but business tone and content. Yet one further drawback to conveyance of personal information is “too much information,” where the personal content overshadows the business at hand.

        Care should be taken to minimize personal small talk when topics are in an emergency or crisis mode as well, for such chitchat may be viewed as deflecting or minimizing the real purpose of the communication. The same holds true for topics such as financial negotiations, and legal, medical, or job emails. Once more serious conditions are removed or settled, it is far more appropriate to continue with a better-balanced tone and content. Essentially, the more serious or complex the central issue, the less time and attention should be given to personal or peripheral information.

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Great news!

My book is now atop the Amazon Netiquette list. Please go to Amazon and search for "netiquette" . There is a wonderful review from Kirkus as well.

Remember you can subscribe to receiving notifications when new blogs are posted:http://netiquetteiq.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
 

About Netiquette IQ

My book, "Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email" and the Kindle version are now available on Amazon. Please visit my author profile at

amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

#PaulBabicki
#netiquette  





Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Connecting with Obama Care (ACA) via email


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#netiquette
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Monday, December 9, 2013

Email Content for Teens - A Warning












Diamonds are forever. Email comes close.

- June Kronholz

I use this quote in my book to get the point across for understanding that anything written on-line is essentially permanent. Even something innocuous, sarcastic or even a typo, can come back many years later to produce a detrimental effect to the author. With some of the more extreme postings which occur through social media, there are even greater dangers in creating some future issues. Below is an article about this situation as proffered by Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This should serve as a concrete statement that proper Netiquette should be implemented, taught and practiced constantly and consistently throughout all demographics.

Top General To Teens: Watch What You Post Online!




WASHINGTON (AP) — If they don't believe their parents, maybe America's teens will listen to the Pentagon's top general.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey worried aloud Wednesday that the next generation of possible military recruits is ignorant about the damage that can come from showing bad or illegal behavior online.
"I worry a bit about ... the young men and women who are now in their teens, early teens, and who probably underestimate the impact of their persona in social media and what impact that could have later in life on things like security clearances and promotions" and so on, he told a conference in Washington.
He said military officials have been considering the idea of giving people a "second start. In other words ... say to young men and women, 'You know what, you probably exposed some things in your social media persona ... Twitter or Facebook ... that would disqualify you, actually, from service. But we're going to give you a shot at starting over ... if you agree from this point forward to live to the set of values that we describe."
Officials later said there is no formal proposal on the table. Rather, Dempsey was merely expressing the growing challenge the military and other employers face assessing their recruiting pools in the no-holds-barred environment of the Internet.
More than three-fourths of teenagers have a cellphone and use online social networking sites such as Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project. Educators say kids have used their mobile phones to post everything from videos of school drug searches, to nude images of girlfriends or boyfriends. Most parents, they say, have no idea.
According to recent polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV, young people say digital "abuse" — such as taunting someone online or threatening them — remains prevalent. Young people also report that they aren't very offended by the slurs and mean-spirited videos they see on social networking sites that target minorities and overweight people.
But the recent polling also suggests that teens and young adults are less comfortable with the idea of circulating offensive posts and view digital abuse as a growing problem that society should address.
Technology also has been a complicating factor for the military's efforts to reduce incidents of sexual assault. There have been several sites on Facebook dedicated to posting offensive comments about female Marines, including posts that make light of violence against women. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., has accused Marine Corps leadership of turning a blind eye to the posts, some of which appear to be made by on-duty Marines and which Speier says fosters a hostile work environment for women in the military.
The Marine Corps has said it won't tolerate behavior that intimidates its female recruits and has sent out warning letters when it believes one of its personnel has posted something offensive. But the Marines also have acknowledged that tracking down the authors of offensive posts can be difficult and time consuming.
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Associated Press writer Anne Flaherty contributed to this report from Washington.

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Great news!

My book is now atop the Amazon Netiquette list. Please go to Amazon and search for "netiquette" . There is a wonderful review from Kirkus as well.

Remember you can subscribe to receiving notifications when new blogs are posted:http://netiquetteiq.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
 

About Netiquette IQ

My book, "Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email" and the Kindle version are now available on Amazon. Please visit my author profile at

amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

#PaulBabicki
#netiquette  

 

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Email signatures

It has long been the opinion of this author that email signatures are one of the five most important aspects of email. This article reflects that opinion. Even though the focus here is on marketing, signatures are equally critical for business, job and most other categories of email. These are discussed in several of my blogs. You can search from the main page to find them. Also, for those looking for a centralized product to manage all of your email from all devices, please view our product website at www.tabularosa.net for the Crossware product description. For those interested in the product, kindly contact sales@tabularosa.net . Enjoy the blog!




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Email signature :an overlooked marketing tool

5 December, 2013 in Opinionby Chris Brown. Permalink.

With the continued search towards highly personalised communication, organisations are spending a fortune on innovative, social media promotions, digital advertising and eCRM campaigns. Yet how much of this activity is actually seen by the right people? And how much of it is targeted, relevant and personalised? Yet a simple and free way to dynamically communicate with customers, suppliers, prospects is being ignored by the vast majority of organizations.
How many thousands of emails does your organisation send each day? And while some of those may half-heartedly promote the brand in the email signature, how many are treating it – the humble email signature – as a comprehensive communications channel in its own right?

Dynamic Communication

Corporate email has been the primary means of communication with customers and prospects, suppliers and business partners for at least a decade. Today, each employee sends an average 30 emails every day], and that is set to increase with figures from Radicatipredicting global business email volumes will rise from 89bn per day in 2012 to 143.8bn by 2016. These corporate emails are highly relevant, sent to a defined and known business specific audience and, as a result, have open rates in excess of 90 per cent.

Given the power of this direct communication method, it is no surprise that over the past few years growing numbers of organizations – or perhaps individuals within organizations – have recognized the value of adding a corporate logo or other branding to the standard email disclaimer and signature.

However, the approach remains essentially static. There is no personalization of message and no exploitation of the immediacy of communication to create a more valuable interaction. How many employees, customers and suppliers follow the company on Twitter or LinkedIn, for example? Are they aware of the latest corporate award, reading blogs or contributing to conversations about new products or services or a key legislative change that is affecting the market?
Email offers three huge advantages for marketers looking to transform the effectiveness and relevance of communication: trust, timing and personalization. Recipients already have a relationship with the business, or are in the process of building one; either way, the email includes information that will have value and, as such, should be eagerly awaited. This is an audience that is receptive and interested, making the email the perfect place and time to introduce a new promotion or social media content. Furthermore, email provides a very simple way of targeting the message based on recipient, sender, or timing of communication. For example, different email signatures can be used for customer sales and pre-sales support to personalize the message to each customer segment or reflect the timing within the sales process. With this approach, it is incredibly effective to plug an event or introduce a social media resource that truly reflects the current interaction with customer, employee or supplier.

Social Value

This approach is particularly compelling for social media, enabling organizations to build on the immediacy of social interactions. With social media increasingly dominating marketing spend and social networking accounts set to rise from 2.7bn in 2012 to over 4.3bn by year end 2016 according to Radicati, there is a clear value to be gained by showcasing social content within every email.

At even the most basic level, using a signature to connect social with email is proven to work – with Unilever claiming to increase LinkedIn connections from 40,000 to 235,000 in just ten months after adding a Follow link to the email signature as part of an employer branding strategy.

Extending this to include blog links or Twitter feeds provides a huge opportunity to create a dynamic brand engagement, encouraging those within the business network to extend the way they interact. For example, existing customers are receptive to emails – they are often waiting for them – but may rarely check out the company’s social activity. Adding a Twitter Follow and blog link, as well as time relevant promotion of events or webinars, can transform the way in which organizations engage.

Centralized Control

It is, however, important to avoid any abuse of the email signature that detracts from the primary objective: the essential information embedded within the email. It is also important to impose control to ensure consistency of message. And this is simply not possible if the business relies on individuals to update email signatures within Outlook. With the majority of employees perceiving email as a personal communication, even when used exclusively for business, far too many organizations have very inconsistent email signatures – from a lack of basic contact details to highly variable branding.

A central control mechanism takes the onus away from the individual and enables marketing to manage the process. Simply creating a template and hoping it will be adopted is fraught with risk – especially given the ‘frustrated graphic designer’ lurking behind many a salesman. And with social media content generated typically on 72 hour timescales, it is not feasible to expect users to continually update email signatures to reflect the latest blog.
Instead, a central approach to signature creation and deployment ensures any dynamic email branding automatically reflects current corporate messaging – from current promotions to the latest social media activity. Signatures can be tailored to specific audiences – for example the sales team can be offered two or three approved and unchangeable, signature options to reflect the nature of the mail recipient, based on customer type, perhaps, or supplier. Date specific promotions enable the use of dynamic banners relating to the current product offer or event with full control over the timing of the activity.
Using email to reinforce the brand is great – especially when the company gets it right. It provides a chance to plug the latest award and reinforce quality standards and accreditations. But there is so much more that could and should be done.
With the right approach to email signatures organizations can create a new, highly effective communications channel that exploits existing investment in both off and online marketing to drive greater engagement and interaction with employees, customers and suppliers. Why wouldn’t you?
Chris Brown is Marketing Director of Exclaimer.

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Great news!

My book is now atop the Amazon Netiquette list. Please go to Amazon and search for "netiquette" . There is a wonderful review from Kirkus as well.

Remember you can subscribe to receiving notifications when new blogs are posted:http://netiquetteiq.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
 

About Netiquette IQ

My book, "Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email" and the Kindle version are now available on Amazon. Please visit my author profile at

amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

#PaulBabicki
#netiquette