According to the green industry buyer report, 70% of respondents chose email as their preferred communication method. And why wouldn't they? Email is simple, fast, easy, and flexible for when people cannot respond right away. Email is perfect for anyone with a busy schedule and a lot of people to contact. Whether your business uses email for marketing, contacting individual clients, or both, the quality and effectiveness of your emailing is very important to think about. Here are 5 ways that you can master email communication:
1. Master the subject line
One drawback about email is that the receiver's inbox can have a lot of clutter, or other distractions that take away the reader's attention from your message. This means that if the reader doesn't feel that your email is as urgent as other emails in his inbox, he might ignore your email altogether. Eventually your email could get lost in the clutter and never opened.
The best way to ensure that the receiver will read your email is by writing a subject line that grabs the reader's attention. You can do this by thinking about what is the most interesting part of your message. Perhaps, you have a promotion going on or you are offering new services. This should be included in the subject line. However, don't give everything away before the reader opens the email. You want the subject to be attention-grabbing but also vague enough that they want to open the email to find out more.
2. Master the timing
Please do not send an email to your clients every single day. That is an effective way of ensuring that your clients opt out of the email list.
You should think about the proper balance between too many emails and not enough emails. Once you have determined what seems like the appropriate frequency, you should think about what day and time is most effective. Mondays and Tuesday are typically very busy work days, which makes these days more difficult to get your message across. Similarly, many people do not check their emails from Friday afternoon until Monday morning. When thinking about what time of day is best to reach people over email, I would suggest that you send the message well before people are going to lunch because a lot of professionals save their reading for their lunch break.
3. Master the readability
Another drawback of email is that people don't want to spend a lot of time reading every word. Most of the time, people skim through their emails, which can sometimes lead to misinterpretations, incorrect assumptions, or missing the whole point.
You can master your readability by getting right to the point and by separating different point with headers that are easy to skim through. Your goal is to be as concise as possible--nobody like long emails--while still getting the message across.
4. Master your relevance
Think about what is most relevant to your audience. Your audience wants to hear about surprising and interesting facts about your company, promotions that could get them more for their money, and services that could be particularly useful to them at the time. One great idea is to email your clients with little reminders that take the pressure off them for remembering everything. For example, you could remind your clients that winter is coming and that they should call soon to talk about the new plans for snow removal.
5. Master your replies
When people reply to your emails, you want to make sure that they know that you care about them. This means that your should reply promptly, sincerely, thoroughly, and professionally to every email that you receive. from a client or potential client. Sometimes replying to every email can get very tedious during times when time could be spent a million other ways. Here are some ways to combat the tediousness while still replying to customer emails:
- Alert the client that it may take a day or two to process and respond to the email but assure them that it is important to you.
- Have a standard template for handling similar emails.
- Notice the patterns of questions that people have and address them in future emails
Remember customer service is a very important part of your small business!
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