If you're looking for the Crossware Blog about Everything Email - you can now find it here
We are very pleased to announce the rebirth of our blog on all things mail, newly revamped and redesigned. Head over to Everything Email now to see the exciting new blog.
According to The Radicati Group - 175 billion email messages will be sent on average every day. This number is predicted to rise to 260 billion daily messages by 2015, with the typical business email user to send and receive 125 emails each day. If this world was perfect then each and every email would be sent to the right person, have no spelling mistakes and contain perfect netiquette. Unfortunately the world, and us human beings, are not perfect. In fact, we are often far from perfect. In being so, a percentage of those 260 billion daily messages will be flawed and a percentage of those flawed will be seriously flawed.
Do NOT try these at work:
1) Responding to an email before reviewing all new messages - Especially in a group email situation, this can lead to a "Woohoo I have a Facebook Profile, when everybody else has already converted to Google+" situation - Check those new messages in case somebody has already beaten you to the post.
2) Forwarding useless emails -You've heard of spam right? Well, something that you find extremely hilarious may not be quite so funny to the next person, there's no need to spam our already full inboxes with chain letters.
3) Sending an email before you mean to - This can result in the wrong person receiving your email, or the right person receiving a half-written note... Not a good look! The best way to avoid this situation is to only enter the recipients details once you've finished writing your email.
4) Including your email signature on every email - Your co-workers know who you work for. You're customers know what you sell. There us no need to repeat your email signature in every situation. Here I'll mention our product, Crossware Mail Signature, for Lotus Notes - With this you can centrally manage every signature in your company, you can even set conditions such as a promotional banner being sent only on first contact, and creating completely separate signatures for your internal and external messages.
5) Replying to all unintentionally - It can be a seriously problem when you send a personal reply to a lot of people, something that leads to many people losing their job. Only ever use this button when you are certain that is what you want to do. In any case, you should double-check your To:, CC: and BCC: fields before clicking "Send"!
6) Forgetting the attachment - So simple, so obvious, yet oh so very common. You write up your message, enter the recipient details, click send, then think "Oops, that attachment I was talking about throughout the email, yeah it's not attached to the email" - Not very professional and it can be embarassing to send a follow up message with the appropriate attachement! One way to conquer this problem is to attach the file before writing the message.
7) Sending the wrong attachment - This could lead to a very sticky situation, with cases such as admin sending out employee bank details to everybody in the office. Double-checking the file preview before sending can definitely save your behind.
8) Sending the email to the wrong person - I don't think we need to explain this one... You can read about the horrors of this case all over the Internet. Please, please, check the recipients field!!!
9) Omitting a recipient when replying to all - Being left out of an important conversation and needing to chase it up yourself, sucks. So don't be the one the cause that problem!
10) Using BCC too often - One again this topic pops up. Using BCC can be like talking behind someone's back. Be careful when, and for what reasons, you use this mysterious field. For more info have a look here - To BCC: or Not to BCC: ... That is the Question!
11) Failing to include a basic greeting - You don't go around randomly starting conversations with people every day. A simple "Hi" is enough to break the ice and instill a bit of courtesy.
13) Not signing off - It's amazing to see cases where people do not sign off with their name, let alone without their logo, company and contact details!! As the creators of Crossware Mail Signature, this kind of mistake would be almost inconceivable - If we had not seen it happen many times for ourselves!
14) Emailing when you're angry - There's no need to have a tantrum like a toddler. Have some time out and respond later, especially in business situations.
15) Forgetting about tone - They say that first person communication is 93% non-verbal. When an email is 100% text it can be easy to forget about the tone of your text, even more importantly is how the text will be perceived by the receiver. Read through the message before sending, just in case something could be taken the wrong way.
16) Using an incorrent subject line - You open emails because you want to read about the subject line topic, so make sure your topic and content match somehow!
17) Having bad manners - Manners include the traditional "Mind your P's and Q's", yet today they include so much more. Take a look at our posts on Netiquette to learn about why you SHOULDN'T TYPE WITH CAPS LOCK ON?!?!?! I sound angry there don't I? ;-)
Age-old sayings can apply to a lot of situations - "Think before you speak" ... "Look before you leap" ... and "Re-read your email before sending" all definitely apply here.
The Oatmeal provides us with a very comical perspective on email netiquette, absolutely love it. From the slow uptake of technology, via ugly signatures, to 30Gb attachments... These guys have done a great job at stereotyping several common email nuisances.
WARNING - VERY FUNNY!
Old school meets new school... and should really get with the program! Isn't it strange how we take an electronic copy contract, email it across the world, print it onto paper, sign it with a pen, switch it back to data and fax it back across the world to finally be printed onto another piece of paper... Logic?!
When emailing somebody else is easier then searching through your own inbox... Too true!
This ties in very nicely with our previous article on Netiquette, if you don't know about BCC: read this post
Of course, something that is very important to us - Email Signatures... We've also done a post discussing these here
Padding, waffle, blabble... Whatever you want to call it, it's just like reading a high school essay!
Awesome - A 4.5GB uncompressed file, of photos, to open in any photo viewer and click "rotate" and "save" for somebody else.
Some people really need to learn about places such as Google Docs, or even blogs...
Remember that random username and password you punched in to enter that competition? No? That's a shame!!
A great thank you to the team at The Oatmeal for providing us with this entertainment for the day - Very well done!
Your organisation has worked hard to develop a corporate image - Your logos, signage, website, brochures and business cards. Everything you do should say who you are and what you stand for. Emails have become an expected and necessary element of business communications, being one of the most direct forms of contact with your customer. Don't let your company's brand suffer through an ignorance of branding those emails!
To clear up a few common misconceptions at first, we must cover the actual concept of "branding".
Branding acts as an overarching concept for all these points - It is about the intangibles (such as service experience and brand image) as much as it is about the tangibles (such as the ad campaign and packaging). Marketing is value creation for your company and branding is your value creation tool. Everything you do, say, write, print and provide becomes part of your brand... And this is no different for every email that leaves your company.
The first part of your email branding to get sorted is your email address. Compuserve was the first company to give personal email addresses to employers such as - 'cs10457882.32(at)compuserve.com'. Now this email address may be great if it was still 1979 and you were an early-adopting computer geek, but these days I don't quite think it would make the cut. Nowadays it's easy to have almost any email address name you would like, along with your own domain name for the company. Don't send business emails from free accounts such as Hotmail if you want to be respected in return!
Now that you've got your email address sorted, it's time to get branding. I won't go into any depth as to how you should go about branding as every company has their own concepts, only that for emails you should be looking to include your contact details in a consistent and attractive format. Most businesses that don't utilise any branding through their email give reasons surrounding the technical difficulty or financial cost of setting it all up. Rick Robertson from Exclaimer offers some general guidelines to email branding, along with advice on setting them up smoothly across your company:
These days there are several different software and service providers in the market, making email branding easier and more affordable. Crossware Mail Signature is a product that we are very proud of - Making email compliance and branding for Lotus Notes easy. If you are serious about your email branding, as you should be, check out your options based on your mail server and needs.
Emails are not solely black and white messages on your computer screen. Every email has a say in your company's branding - They can make or break your corporate image.
Most people give little thought to their email signatures, yet it is one of the most versatile marketing tools around. When well used, it can be an effortless way to promote yourself and your business easily. Companies spend countless hours and money to build their corporate image and it is such a shame when email signatures are unprofessional, unorganised, and plain ugly.
There are no set guidelines to what an email signature should look like. The rule of thumb is to provide very basic information about who you are, what you do, and how you can be reached.
Here is an example of what not to do:
There is no need to include four different phone numbers, or to include every single social media in your email - if necessary, make it available on your website where people can find it easily.
In many parts of the world, laws dictate that companies need to include the appropriate email disclaimer and disclosure information on all electronic communications. In the EU, for example, all business communications need to include a company registration number and the office that the company was registered in.
You may think that it's getting harder to create a signature that is beautifully simple yet legally compliant, and effective in marketing yourself and the company. However, it's just a matter of combining the right ingredients...
Here at Crossware, we love beautiful email signatures, so we've come up with a few tips:
Take a look at this example and see what you think...
... You may notice that the signature in its entirety is quite long, this is due to the requirements previously mentioned for the EU. One method to lessen the effects of this requirement it to lighten the text colour and make it less noticeable. However, the sender's personal information is short, sharp and easy to read - Beautiful!
We would love to hear your email signature stories, the good and the bad - Feel free to join our community via this blog, or else through Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter... You can find the mentioned links to the left.
As we all know, there is a new kid in town and his (or her) name is Social Media.
Is social media killing email marketing? Some tips to integrate rather than eliminate...
According to a study by GetResponse - Emails containing social media sharing options such as Facebook or Twitter generated a 30% higher ClickThrough Rate (CTR) than emails without them. What is even more interesting is that emails including at least three different sharing options had a 55% higher CTR, however the study found that only 11.2% of emails currently offer three or more sharing options.
It is promising to see that email marketing is becoming stronger and more effective through an integration with social media. So, how do we go about this? Here are a few tips on how to successfully integrate email marketing with social media:
1. Include "share" buttons in newsletters and promotions; and offer users a reason to use them.
A study by Nielsen Norman Group showed that students used the "share" option more often, when they could perceive benefits from it. For example, "Share this in Facebook and find out what your friends think about this product", "Share this in Twitter so your friends know where to find you".
2. Promote exclusive offers in Social Media Networks that are only available for email subscribers.
Email subscribers demand exclusive advantages for their loyalty, reserving certain privileges for only this group will increase the perceived value of your email subscription and gives motivation for other users to join.
3. Publish Facebook competition winners in the company newsletter.
Don't focus solely on the direct incentives of social media competitions - such as an increase in brand recognition and Word-of-Mouth - but create a link between your social community and your email subscribers to open up the flow of interaction.
4. Create a mail group that includes Twitter followers and send them additional information through email. Twitter followers appreciate the "information rich yet simple" perspective the 140 character limit offers, so offer them information that awakens their curiosity. For example, "Keep an eye on our Twitter page, we are announcing three steps the could win you a trip to New Zealand".
Due to privacy reasons, capturing Social Media Users' personal data has become complicated, yet voluntarily given details can create a considerable amount of leads. Facebook is becoming the biggest relationship marketing tool for companies, and the most important thing a company should do is to integrate social media with its existing marketing tools - such as email marketing.
So the answer is - Well, no, social media shouldn't be signalling the end of email marketing. Every company has multiple tools and channels to utilise within their marketing strategy and social media has recently emerged as a sparkly new tool to get excited about. As the studies have shown, not only can social media work alongside more traditional techniques such as email marketing, these techniques are able to compliment each other to create a stronger overall marketing strategy for your firm.
The one thing you should remember is that Social Media is just another tool in your toolbox - not an alternative to existing marketing methods. A builder doesn't pick up his brand new powerdrill and then leave his trusty hammer behind!
Have you ever sent an email without truly thinking it through, and then have that same email come back to bite you in the a**? Most countries allow a certain freedom of speech, where people may speak freely without censorship, however this doesn't count for anything and everything. What's more, with the evolution of the Internet and its archiving powers, the things you "say" via email are now recorded in the online realm.
After searching around for some good examples of this, we came across a GREAT example found on stuff.co.nz (a current-affairs type website here in New Zealand).
Picture this: A UK teenager of 17 years old has a few too many drinks, sat down to watch some tv, jumped on the computer to flick off an email, and was then banned from the USA.
When I read this article, I almost laughed out loud at the sillyness of it all. What happened was that Luke Angel (17) had a few drinks before sitting down to watch a program about the September 11 attacks of 2001. After being so incensed by what he saw, Luke decided to send an email to the White House in which he called President Obama "a prick". According to the Daily Mail, the FBI intercepted the email and contacted UK police. The local Bedfordshire police then knocked on Luke's door, informing him that he was now banned from the USA for life. Who would have thought that one silly email venting some anger could get you banned from a country!!
Unfortunately, this isn't the only example of where email mistakes have had such a great effect on people's lives. Whilst this was a personal email that had personal consequences, there have been many cases around the world where an email has had individuals fired, fined, found personally liable for company damage, the list goes on...
Keep an eye out for our next post on emails gone wrong, where we pick out a few of the more serious cases of email mistakes!
Emails are all about capturing attention. As human-beings, we are programmed to enjoy entertainment, if something attracts our senses then we tend to take good notice of those elements. This phenomenon continues into the realm of emails; the more it lights up my eyes, the more interested I am in the details!
Imagine getting an email like this (sorry the link appears to be dead now!) in your inbox, amidst the densely populated text-based semi-spam:
Now that is one cool use of blank page space!
Here is another interesting example of a different 'out there' kind of email, where customers can find a slight novelty in scrolling siiiiideways rather than the traditional, boring, downwards scroll. Hey, if you receive hundreds of emails each day then something as simple as a change in scrolling direction could make an email really stand out!
There's some debate about asking people to scroll "below the fold" (including a great rebuttal here - http://iampaddy.com/lifebelow600/) but if you're offering something worth scrolling for -- a bit of fun, a lot of value -- you'll get the scroll, all the way down. Or to the right. Or back up a bit... and left... and on to the bottom.
And then the work day full of emails becomes a bit more exciting than the usual:
And on that note; I'd better check my emails... *refresh*... fingers crossed! 
It is almost a certainty that at some time in your life, you will be targeted by scammers -- And the Internet has made it so much easier for those scammers to find you. While some scams are blaringly obvious money-stealing attempts, others are not quite so obvious... Especially for those newer to the Internet. However, it's not difficult to understand how these scams work and more importantly, how to recognise them.
The three most common email scams can be labelled under the terms of Phishing, Nigerian, and Lottery scams:
Phishing Scams - This is where the email identifies itself with a bank or some kind of financial service provider. You are directed to a link in order to provide personal information such as account numbers and passwords, often into a website that is nearly identical to the official website of an official company. In this case, the scammer directly receives your details and will use them however they please - If you provide them! Official companies seldom request sensitive information via email, if at all, if you have any doubts just call the company directly and question the email's legitimacy.
Nigerian Scams - Here the email requests your help to access a small forture in a foreign bank account, in return you will receive a percentage of the funds. Also known as a "419" scam, the email acts as an opening to then scam people regarding a fortune that doesn't exist. Once you reply and engage in dialogue with the scammer, you will be asked to transfer an "advance-fee" supposedly needed prior to the promised transaction.
Lottery Scams - The final common scam email informs the target that they have won some huge amount of money through an international lottery that they were "randomly selected" to be in the draw. Often the emails will reference and link to legitimite companies and lottery organisations. Once again there is no money anywhere, the only real money is the money they attempt to get the target to send through as a "processing fee" along with a great deal of personal information.
For a great breakdown of the Top 10 Internet/Email Scams, check out Paul Gil's article on About.com here. Take your time to read through each one so that in the future you won't even be tempted to respond or follow a link.
Be very careful around emails from strangers (or anybody for that matter) who promise you money or business deals, ask for donations, or ask for any sensitive information either via email or through a link... They are most likely looking to scam you!
According to the Oxford English Dictionary: Etiquette is
a. The prescribed ceremonial of a court; the formalities required by usage in diplomatic intercourse.
b. The order of procedure established by custom in the army or navy (esp. with reference to promotion), in parliament, etc.
c. The conventional rules of personal behaviour observed in the intercourse of polite society; the ceremonial observances prescribed by such rules.
d. The unwritten code of honour by which members of certain professions (esp. the medical and legal) are prohibited from doing certain things deemed likely to injure the interests of their brethren, or to lower the dignity of the profession.
Etiquette over the years has changed dramatically, in fact many people would say that as the generations are passing by we are forgetting what it means to be polite and have manners. The advancement of technology over the years has also created hurdles for etiquette to try and leap over, such as the Internet. Certain people may scoff at the idea that realms such as the Internet have any need for etiquette, or even question its existence. However, even the all-official Oxford English Dictionary has Internet etiquette under its own heading... Netiquette is:
An informal code of practice regulating the behaviour of Internet users when using email, bulletin boards, chat rooms, newsgroups etc.
This extends to every possible aspect on the Internet. With the number of specific "platforms" we now have such as Facebook and Twitter, Netiquette provides its own rules for each type of media. As per usual, at Crossware we are interested specifically in all things email. After searching around to see what others have said on the topic (trust me, this topic is well-covered!), I would like to share the following link to the Netmanners website -
http://www.netmanners.com/email-etiquette/email-etiquette-101/
Netmanners is an absolutely wicked site to keep you updated on all things related to online etiquette. As Judith from Netmanners.com explains, a lack of expected email etiquette can very easily lead to scaring away any prospective business. I urge you to have a good read of the Netmanner's link on email etiquette, however here's a brief summary outlining the "10 common courtesies" that Judith runs through:
Today I'm going to finish with an image that emphasises an idea that I have repeated throughout this post...
