Using Your E-Mail Wisely

Email is a powerful tool for business though, these days, with the huge and ever increasing volume of spam, it is becoming more and more frustrating to use. Using your email wisely is your key to successful communication with your customers and others who may be important to your business success.

The first thing is to get a good email account. Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail are okay but they may have two serious problems:

1) Your mail (both incoming and outgoing) may be filtered outside of your control, and

2) Your address may not be seen as "professional" by those who receive your mail.

Those who deal with your business, including your customers, suppliers, accountant, banker, lawyer, and other professionals, may expect to see a more professional address. Having your own domain name, and using email which reflects it, can be important. Sticking with the same email address over time is good too.

Using a mailing system that allows you to both control the spam filtering and check the filtered (spam) mail is a serious consideration. Allowing others to filter your mail outside of your control means you could lose important messages from time to time. I prefer to receive my email 100% entirely un-filtered and use an email program (Pegasus Mail) that does the filtering. Mail flagged as spam is put into a folder where I can check it as time permits. It may seem like an annoying second step (it is!) but it guarantees I find all my good email.

Unfortunately email can still pass through spam filters elswhere on the Internet so I may not always receive 100% of the email intended for me. This is frustrating because it is completely outside of my control and, unfortunately, some of the well-meaning, but poorly trained and uninformed, techies around the 'net have completely the wrong ideas about filtering spam.

Construct your emails professionally. Email is about getting your message -- your brief, too the point, text-based message -- content across to the recipient. The recipient may be busy and may not want a long, rambling, personal message, especially in the first contact. Be polite, friendly, and professional. And, where possible, be brief. Personal content and chit chat can come after you get to know the person and should, perhaps, be confined to separate, non-business emails.

Using HTML in your emails is probably not a good idea. Reserve this for newsletters at worst. At best, if you need HTML to say what you have to say then create a web page and refer the email recipient to it by including the URL.

Graphics are also a no-no unless the recipient is expecting them. Multiple large graphics should be sent another way unless you have cleared the transfer by email with the recipient. Never use graphics for a signature or background paper in a business communication. Oh, sure, it looks pretty. But pretty isn't what your contact is about and many people will be using different email programs that may not handle your grahics well. If, for example, you use a dark background (paper) which requires light text, and the recipient's email program doesn't show the background but does render the light text they may not be able to easily read your message. Causing frustration for the recipient is not conducive to a good business exchange.

Trim your replies to include only the quoted text necessary to support the points you are making in your reply. Including multiple automatically-appended previous messages at the bottom of your reply only uses excessive bandwidth to no purpose and drives up the cost of the Internet for everyone. Some people have bandwidth limits on their accounts and you just wasted some of it with non-essential quoted content. The recipient may not be happy about that especially if he thinks you are just too lazy to bother trimming the reply. If you don't know how to trim your replies, find out!

Never forward "send seven copies of this email" messages to business clients. This reflects poorly on the seriousness of your business approach and will annoy the heck out of many of them. If you are sending something like this along for a purpose, trim off the dozens (or hundreds) of headers and resend quotes on the message and send only the actual body content. And, just so you know, Jesus doesn't reward you with happiness, or give you your wish, or ensure your success, for sending these messages along. The only people who find happiness over this are the spammers who have tricked you into doing thier work for them!

Don't send e-cards to your business clients (or to anyone, for that matter!). Although there are still a few legitimate e-card sites, many are run by spammers and scammers as a way to collect email addresses, to get their "from" addresses added to the "accept" list of the recipient's spam filters or "white" lists, and often include nasty things like viruses, trojans, and spyware. Since the recipient usually has to "run" the animated card process it is a sure way to install the malware in the process. Stay far away from these sites and don't promote them to others! I never open an e-card even if I know the person who sent it to me and even if they advised me it was coming.

Make the subject of your email meaningful and don't use a subject commonly used in spam. One word subjects, especially "Hi" or "Hello" are a poor choice. Briefly say what your message is about. And you may include a keyword, likely in CAPS, at the beginning of the subject to indicate it is from you. This allows the recipient to key this to their "white" list to ensure recieving all future messages from you. For example, my email subjects typically begin with "WIZ" like this:

WIZ - Use Your Email Wisely

My messages stand out visually an can easily be flagged as acceptable to many spam filters.

Email can be a powerful business tool and is a great way to communicate with your clients, prospects, busienss associates, and others, but you should respect your recipients and learn to use your email wisely.

[The Rev. Stephen B. Henry, PhD., known online as "the wiz", is a professional website designer and e-commerce consultant who has been involved in online business since 1989.]

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