How to Write Email That Gets OpenedWritten by Susan Dunn, M.A.
In some of these tips, I disagree with traditional advice, and I'll tell you why.1. Use a subject line that's descriptive. We are all deluged with email and wary of viruses. Help your reader out. Flag them as to subject matter. 2. Don't use all capital letters. It's not because they're "screaming," which is debatable by now, it's because it's much more work for your eyes to read words written in all caps. Psych 101. Use upper and lower case letters. 3. Take a tip from a marketing expert. Use a font people can read easily, i.e., serifed. Here I disagree with current trend to use a font like Arial. A "serifed" font, such as Times New Roman or Calisto, has lines at bottoms and tops of letters that are strong visual cues to reader. Courier is font to use when spacing matters; all letters and numbers take up same space. 4. Don't spam. 5. Cut down on graphics. Popular servers like hotmail.com don't have much storage space. Aol.com has trouble accepting graphics. Use links (or attachments) for charts and graphs, and make sure links work before you send email. 6. Make it easy for reader to reach you. Initially, include contact information in your email--email address (some servers don't show this on return and it takes a lot of time to retrieve it, trust me), website URL, phone number, name, title, street address, P.O. box, whatever it takes. 7. When in doubt, don't be cute. That's what rules are for--to save you grief. Put a lid on your "personality" until you know person and know what you're doing. Remain professional and go by book. Use a salutation ("Dear") and a closing ("Sincerely"), paragraphs, proper punctuation and standard business format.
| | Marketing a Professional Practice Free By WritingWritten by Susan Dunn, Coach
Permission to reprint this article is granted provided bio line stays intact.Since I'm a writer, I grow my coaching practice by writing; it gets my name around, establishes my expertise, promotes my services and also field of coaching. Writing itself takes time, so I economize my efforts. Here's what I do: 1. Read a current interest book such as "A General Theory of Love," by Lewis, Amini and Lannon. Then I do extensive Internet research around topic to see what else is out there. 2. Review book on Barnes & Noble, amazon.com. 3. Write an article about new theory of love and submit it to coaching sources. 4. Create Top 10s, Coaching Tips, and Quotations from material. 5. Rework material and write a story for another sort of ezine (relationships, for instance, or singles) - this could be for free, or for money. 6. Write an article on topic for my own ezine, which comes out twice a week. On a large topic like that, I'll do a series of short articles.
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