By BIG Mike McDaniel

Thinking about saving time and postage this holiday season by sending your greetings by eMail? Don’t.

Using eMail will get greeting delivered all right, but it might not be message you want to convey. eMail is great for rapid communication. eMail is terrific for business. eMail it is great for old friends to keep in touch. But eMail is a real flop when it comes to expressing genuine emotion or caring.

The sentiment expressed when you snail-mail a card, picked by you, addressed by you and signed by you cannot be duplicated on a color monitor. Some people like to use free electronic greeting cards that send an eMail message that points recipient to a web page that has an antimated greeting card, some artificial music, and an ad for a product! What feeling does that convey?

Think back to holidays past and joy of opening cards and reading handwritten messages. Now consider how you felt when card was factory imprinted with name or business of sender, or worse, how you felt when your name was stickered on front by a computer label.

I help people and businesses better understand and use eMail. With over 50 Billion eMail messages traveling around globe every day, there is not a lot of room for flat emotion of an eMail holiday greeting. First, more than half of people who use eMail still see only plain vanilla text. Newer and fancier eMail programs allow reader to see fancy pages with color and photos, called HTML. But if you send an HTML encoded eMail message to a friend with plan vanilla text eMail, your message will be lost in lists of code and funny characters. I tell my audiences to stay away from eMail greetings at holiday time.

Many people put their snail-mail (US Post Office) address in “signature” at end of their eMail messages. Most eMail programs will do that automatically on every message, if you ask. Start now, collecting post office addresses so you can mail a sentiment to your friends.

You can keep your holiday list in computer, nothing wrong with that, but leave labels in drawer and print list only as a guide for hand addressing those envelopes. Get family involved. Everyone can address, even kids.

If you feel comfortable with your computer, check into printing your own greeting cards. There are a number of programs available at office and computer supply stores that will design and print cards for you, for any occasion. They come with blank cards and envelopes. Make sure program you select has refills and additional card blanks available.

Your Small Business Image can be Shattered by Your Phone

by BIG Mike McDaniel

Business to Business relationships come to expect a certain level of professionalism, from first telephone call to final delivery.

Your business can be on Really Big 500 list, employ only a handful of people, or be a business of one but what is said by that business to other business customers will reflect personality of that business. It can be a PR boost or a PR blowout. Have you called telephone company or your long distance provider lately? Chances are you will get a machine telling you to” listen closely because menus have changed” (as if they know you called last year). When you do listen closely, chances are there is not a choice on menu that sounds like reason you called. Worse, you could choose a selection and be directed to an area that does not answer with no way to get back to real people. What does that say about company? Terrible impression. Only company’s bean counters will argue that all that “select and press” boogie-woogie is good for company.

Word of mouth is faster and cheaper than any other form of advertising, and very widespread. Have you talked with anyone that thinks voice mail menus are nifty?

Same if you have to call an insurance company, or credit card company. Now, it seems, more and more calls are greeted with “all our agents are busy, please hold” message. Can you imagine how that one got started? “Look, Herb, if we put main line on voice mail, we can trim our customer support staff in half, just have machine say ‘everyone is busy helping other customers’, we can save really big bucks!” Not much for PR is it? Even worse if they ditch 800 number and make you pay for call.

For years I have told my clients to look to big boys to see how they do things. Now I hedge my advice, by pointing them at big boys that are doing it right, because so many have made more than one wrong turn on road to a professional, caring image.

The telephone is only one part of puzzle, but one of most important parts. I tell my clients with small to mid size businesses to call office from time to time to see how phone is answered. I cannot count number of times I have had to ask to person answering phone to repeat mesh of words that just flew by. Hundreds of times I have been ka-thudded on hold with not so much as a “Hang on Bub!” It is true, you can hear a smile on other end of phone. You can also hear indifference and easy one to spot is outright disgust. One bored telephone person can do more to undo what took years to do more than any other company asset (or liability).