Pick up the phone instead… Email remains one of the primary ways that businesses communicate internally among their staff, and externally with their customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. However, make sure you recognize when email is losing its effectiveness. It’s easy to hide behind email when we don’t want to speak to a scary client or team member. I’ve been guilty of that as well when I have a million things going on. But sometimes a three minute conversation can clear up the confusion inherent in five days of back-and-forth email messages.

If you’re like me and you receive a lot of email, you can use folders to store messages from different people or clients. In most email programs, you can set up automatic rules (often called filters) that will place all messages from Joe into a specific folder. That way you can review all of the messages Joe sends over to you, reply to the ones that need attention, and not have to spend the time moving the messages from the inbox to another folder when you’re finished. All of the messages addressed to info@globalmarketingplus.com, for example, go to a different […]

How many times have you felt that the person receiving your email just isn’t on the same page as you? A lot of times it’s literally true. You might be thinking that they are looking at one page on a website, when in fact they are looking at something completely different. I know I’ve been frustrated by this in the past. Simple pasting a link into an email is the best strategy. Again, it seems simple, but it can mean the difference between confusion and clarity. It’s also easy to do, and takes very little time. In your browser, simply […]

A strong call to action can make the difference between someone glancing at your message or actually doing something with it. In this busy world, sometimes it helps to be direct. In direct marketing or email correspondence, most of the time you want someone to take a specific action when they receive your message. You might want to set up an in-person meeting, or have them click through to a website to read more. Or respond back and say, “Yes, let’s go ahead with the project.” The most effective email messages always have a strong call to action, telling the […]

If you’re like me, you’re often jumping in an out of meetings or appointments. In between, you have a couple of minutes to return a couple of phone calls, so how do you choose which people you’ll call back first?  Often the decision is made for me… so make sure your messaging is as effective as possible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve not returned a call promptly because I didn’t have someone’s contact information readily available. I’m sure you’ve had the same experience. Someone emails you to please call them or you just want to call them. […]

Personalization works. According to many recent research studies, email messages that are personalized have stronger message open and clickthrough rates. Everyone likes being called by their name. In this impersonal world of email messages, people like to know that you know who they are, and that you care about them as a person. Nothing is worse than a highly demanding email that is sent without being addressed to someone by name and is out of context. A message that starts: “Can you make these changes ASAP?” puts you on the defensive right way. You might think: Why should I care […]