SENDING SIGNALS!

Thursday, December 20, 2012

7 Steps To Fail At Email.

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Email is still a rather popular means of communication, although it is being replaces for many purposes with text messaging and the growing universe of social media sharing platforms.

Here's a great list (compiled from personal experience) of NOT-TO-DOs in any email, or campaign where email plays a role:

1) Don't send a mass mailing of an email to a whole group of individuals and boldly display all of the names on your distribution list in the cc area, where each person can see your whole darn list, or may even choose to send a personal response to you and inadvertently send the letter to the entire list of recipients [the old "Oops! I just hit 'Reply All' " goof];

2) Don't send out a mass mailing of an email to a group of 'undisclosed recipients' and try to cleverly keep their names hidden from each other by seemingly sending it via cc to yourself. That just looks plain cheap. Use a mail handling program instead, such as MailChimp iMail, Constant Contact or another well-known and reliable service if your going to be sending mass mailings.;

3) Don't keep on recycling the subject lines in a running chain of email communications with someone. Take a moment to show your recipient some respect by changing the subject line to make it relevant to the subject matter of the email's content. Nobody enjoys getting email with "Fw: Re: Re: Re: Company Picnic" in the dead of winter;

4) Don't send an email to anyone without ever using that person's name in the opening line of the email. Personalize it to suit the recipient;

5) If an email has attachments, indicate this fact in the subject line of the email;

6) If your email has attachments, always, always put page numbers on any attached reports or documents, regardless of the length. Every now and again some tree burner will hit the 'Print' button on his or her computer, and walk away for a moment to get a cup of coffee (or if that someone is The Mentalist, it might be tea), only to return and find 30 unnumbered pages lying on the floor. That person then has to play detective and try to put those pages in order. He or she will come to hate you.

7) If your email contains an attached document, be certain that the document has a version number on it and a new date on it, so that it doesn't get confused with an earlier version of a similarly-titled document which he or she already has on file.

What else can I really say? Well -- there is one thing. Don't ever send somebody an email when they are within earshot. That's just rude. Unless, of course you, are carrying on an office affair. ;-) - in which latter case you're probably in for a heap of trouble.

Thank you for reading me, re-tweeting me and completing me.

Douglas E. Castle for The Sending Signals Blog, The Crowd Funding RSS Feeds Blog, The CFI CrowdFunding Incubator Blog and The Internationalist Page Blog

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Enhanced Emails And Mobile Messaging

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I have often mentioned that both email and texting carry with them an air of impersonality, of impatience, and of conspicuous disrespectful multitasking. While my basic feelings are somewhat the same as they were a year ago (see below), "enhanced" emails and mobile messages can carry much more detail, gravity, personality and even intimacy if they are done with painstaking care. Here's my view from the past:
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Email is the appropriate broadcast or distribution forum for non-time-sensitive mass mailing, sending newsletters, for issuing memos (where an electronic record should be retained) and for sending large attachments. It is superb for contracts, as well. It is becoming somewhat outmoded by many other signaling mechanisms and applications, but it is still quite useful.

Having said this, email does not work, (certainly not even as effectively as instant messaging, rapid back-and-forth texting, telephoning, web conferencing or just getting together (in the real world, and not in some coffee chatroom in cyberspace), for having a conversation. Here's why:

1) Too much time may lapse between sending, receiving and responding. Momentum is lost, timeliness is lost, spontaneity is lost, and nuances of meaning are lost. Emails are cold representatives, and very flat-affect messengers. No brainstorming every happened through a discrete series of emails.

2) If your email subject line isn't a grabber, you're liable to wind up being inadvertently deleted -- and you'll sit stewing in anger on the wrongful assumption that your email was read. There is so much correspondence in the average inbox that your missive is likely to be missed. If it is read by the intended recipient, it may be read more than a day after it was sent.

3) Email now carries a cache, deservedly or not, of being one-sided, and is generally read with a modicum of prejudice against the sender. The hidden message that supersedes and often outweighs the email content is that "I am making a declaration from the mountaintop, and I don't wish to be interrupted by your thoughts or questions."

If you truly want to accomplish something, conversations are best carried out where there is a facility and expectation of rapid thought and response...sort of like neurons transmitting a signal.

The bottom line is this: Use email wisely. It is a useful tool for transmitting information. But never use it as a platform for passionate, urgent or sensitive conversation. It works against you.
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Now I'll take a moment to update and modify my stance (Man -- how I hate to be proven wrong!). With the availability, increasing popularity and increasing quality of voicemail embeds (http://audioboo.fm), where people can hear you speak, with the utmost sincerity for up to 3 minutes -- and with the embedding of either webcam or other videos, slideshows, hysterically-scripted avatars (http://www.voki.com), and 2 minute cartoons (http://goanimate.com), an email or text message can be personalized, more sensorially captivating, and much more meaningful.

It even affords the sender a chance to put extra creativity, and an echo of his or her personality into the transmittal.

I would strongly suggest that you give these enhancements a try -- not only for basic person-to-person communications, but even for group messages, entertainment of the recipients and serious marketing and branding. We'll have to wake up the folks at MAD MARKETING TACTICS about this development.

In the meantime, meet a friend of mine from the skeleton crew who went out on a wild bender last night and forgot to attend his ladyfriend's dinner dance...He appears to us through Voki.

You might want to forward this to all of your friends, with the possible exception of your mom or your psychiatrist....

Douglas E Castle

http://SendingSignals.blogspot.com
http://TakingCommand.blogspot.com