As with any communication, what you say upfront can dramatically impact effectiveness of your e-mail. Spending a few minutes to summarize a situation before launching into a recommendation or asking recipients to share their opinions helps you build your credibility and make most of medium as a way to communicate and build consensus. It may seem obvious, but by simply creating a section in your e-mail that says 'Background' can help save your readers effort thereby aiding your cause in getting everybody "on same page."

6. Get to point.

Get to point in first few sentences. Have you ever noticed how effective newspapers are at conveying key information in a small amount of space? You can achieve same results by putting key information up front in catchy wording. Tell them "who," "what," "when," "why," and "how." The result: you quickly inform your readers about key information and give them queues to easily determine if it's worth their while to read on. They'll appreciate it.

7. Be brief.

If you've got a lot of information to share; consider writing an executive summary and attach a longer document to mail or post it somewhere and include a link. Don't expect people to read through a 10 page e-mail to find pertinent content. The time that people can devote to e-mail is precious, so tell them what they really need to know up front and provide access to further detail should they have need or interest.

8. Be clear.

We need to be extra clear in composing e-mails. Communication is made up of a lot more than just words. When we communicate in person, we use words, facial gestures, body language, and tone together to deliver a complete communication. With invention of telephone, we lost physical component of communication and with e-mail we have added another layer of abstraction - and we are left with just words. Don't get me wrong, words are very powerful things! In fact, your choice of words themselves and how you arrange them in prose becomes all more important when they're not accompanied by those other elements that we experience in face-to-face communication. This makes it critical that we choose our words carefully to ensure that there is only one meaning that can be discerned from each sentence. If you're authoring an e-mail that is particularly important you may want to consider writing it in word processing software such as Microsoft Word. The added benefit of built in dictionary, thesaurus and grammar checker can give you piece of mind that your form is top notch so you can focus on e-mail's content.

And when composing a multiple paragraph e-mail consider including headlines above each paragraph to provide greater clarity and guide reader through your thought process. For example, headlines for a mail dealing with a departmental challenge might be: 'Background, The Issue, Potential Solutions, My Recommendation, What I Need From You."

9. Use power tools.

Another way to ensure that your communication is clear and accurate is appropriate use of text styles and fonts. But be careful not to create an e-mail that combines too many font types and colors; there's a fine line between using formatting options to aid your reader in negotiating content and creating a document that's more suitable for wall of your daughter's kindergarten classroom. And remember that if you're sending your mail outside company, recipient may not be able to see your creative use of text options. Simple uppercase and punctuation may be your best tools in this case.

10. Make your expectation clear.

Tell recipient(s) what you want them to do next and when it needs to be done. And give them info they need to do to do it. Phone numbers, fax, e-mail addresses, snail mail addresses should all be part of your e-mail template. And make your e-mail template reflect your personal Brand. In addition to your writing style, you can use a consistent on-brand template to further communicate your personal brand attributes.

82% reported satisfaction with health information they found. One in three say they know someone who has been helped by Internet health information. Two out of 100 know someone who has been harmed.

Most searched for health information pertains to specific diseases, weight control, and prescription drug information. Inquiries are increasing for mental health information and for sensitive medical topics.

Sixty-eight million Americans reported using government agency web sites -- a dramatic increase from 40 million in March of 2000. 40% started their search at a major search engine or web site such as AOL or MSN. Most scanned search link for names that seemed to fit. Only 21% visited sites according to rank.

28 million Americans (up from 19 million in late 2000) use search engines to find religious or spiritual information or contacts. Only 4% started their search at religious portals.

Other statistics of interest to marketers: 95% of Internet-using Americans go online to use email. 80% do searches 80% look for hobby-related information 37% play games online 75% go online to research a product or service before making a purchase 63% look for information about movies, books and entertainment 44% look for financial information 20% participate in auctions 9% visit dating web sites 5% go online to gamble

Only 21% of Americans (twenty-four million people) have broadband Internet access in their homes. However, this number is four times greater than in 2000. The broadband users are more likely to be wealthy, educated males. Not surprisingly, persons with high speed access make fuller use of Internet's resources than those with dial up connections.

There you have it. Lots of numbers to help you develop your marketing plans or to incorporate in your business plan.

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