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Market Your Small
Business With E-Mail
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Article 3: E-Mail Friendly Tips
Although the subject field is all-important,
here are other tips and tricks to make your
e-mail more effective:
• Tailor to your target. Ask recipients if they
prefer HTML format or plain text. HTML is reader
friendly, but takes longer to download and view.
Plain text is unimpressive, but everyone’s
e-mail software can receive and display it. Be
customer-wise: Ask them what they want.
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Speak your recipients’ language. Don’t
speak slang to formal audiences or speak
down to friends. If your audience has
diverse segments, consider tailoring
different e-mail messages for each.
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Determine your recipients’ other
preferences. Some folks attend to e-mail
first thing in the morning. Others put it
off. If you make periodic mailings,
segregate them by recipients’ preferences.
Ask what time of day and day of the week
they prefer. It’s a small matter to manually
send the same e-mail at different times to
different segments. It’s a subtlety worth
exploring if you want your e-mail read.
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Watch your manners. Don’t write in all
capital letters LIKE THIS. That’s the online
equivalent of shouting. It’s also more
difficult to read.
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Most e-mail software allows you to reply to
a message and contain the original message
in your reply in some way that sets it
apart from what you have written. Choose one
of the conventions, such as indenting the
previous message, or using markings such as
the greater-than sign “> >” to distinguish
the original message. Most e-mail programs
have pre-set configurations you can choose
from. Doing so enables you and your
recipients to retrace your steps in any
e-mail and never lose track of the original
issue, or what was previously written.
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Promise complete confidentiality. Post
on your Web site and in your e-mails a
notice that everyone contacting you can be
assured their personal information will not
be sold or provided to third parties. This
removes barriers for those who otherwise may
desire to engage you in e-mail dialogue, but
are fearful of being placed on a mailing
list that deluges them with unwanted e-mail.
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Archive in-coming and out-going e-mail.
Just as you would keep copies of other
business correspondence or hard copy files
on clients and prospects, keep copies of
what you send and receive by e-mail. It
doesn’t take up much space, and most e-mail
software makes it a snap to search by word
or phrase through archived e-mails to
retrieve something later.
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Archived e-mail can be effective as a
reminder of what others have said when
returning them a copy of their own words.
It’s invaluable in resolving disputes,
reconstructing conversations,
re-establishing dates and sequences, and
countless other customer-service
applications.
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Embedded links. Every out-going e-mail
should include a hyperlink to your Web site.
In the same way it’s great for promoting
special offers, even when unrelated to the
subject of the e-mail.
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