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Today's rant - email

Guest post by: Margie Albert

Article Overview: In today’s world email has taken the place of letters, phone calls and virtually every form of solicitation invented. The abuse, lack of respect and infringement on our space is appalling. All the cc’s, bcc’s and assumptions that we will read a scrolling, single-spaced novel makes me want to scream daily. Some really simple rules for TV Account Executives and Sales Managers:

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Today's rant - email

In today’s world email has taken the place of letters, phone calls and virtually every form of solicitation invented. The abuse, lack of respect and infringement on our space is appalling. All the cc’s, bcc’s and assumptions that we will read a scrolling, single-spaced novel makes me want to scream daily.

STOP THE CRAZINESS!

Some really simple rules for TV Account Executives and Sales Managers:

  1. Don’t cc someone just so they are a part of a paper trail. If you need a paper trail later you will have it in your mailbox.
  2. If you are cc’d you are not required to respond. Therefore, if you need a response put that person in the “to” line.
  3. If you feel the need to bcc someone something is not right – it’s like talking behind someone’s back. I suggest never using bcc.
  4. If an email needs to be paragraphs long turn it into a Word document attachment as a follow up to a phone call which leads me to #5.
  5. If you have that much to say that would require paragraphs have a real conversation – yes, actually TALK to someone.
  6. Is there anything in this email I would not want my mother, spouse, or child to see? If there is hit “delete” immediately or rewrite.
  7. Is the font professional and large enough to read? Please do not use ‘comic” unless you are one!
  8. “If you had to pay 42 cents to send this email would you?” ~Seth Godin
  9. Does the subject line reflect the contents? If not, rewrite.
  10. If the email is to an advertiser is it about them? If not, rewrite. Should always be about them.
What other email tips or pet peeves do you have?

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Home > Sales > Margie Albert > Todays rant email >
Article Tags: account executives, email, sales managers, seth godin
Referred by: http://dannybrown.me/

About the Author: Margie Albert
RSS for Margie's articles - Visit Margie's website

Margie is an award winning media professional with 30+ years of experience working in the broadcast, radio, print and online industries. FOCUS ON CUSTOMER SUCCESS launched March '09 and helps Broadcast Companies grow audiences and revenue through their many information distribution channels. Sales training includes solution-based selling with a FOCUS ON CUSTOMER SUCCESS.

Click here to visit Margie's website Dashed Line

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Related Forum Posts
Subject line Etiquette Subject line Etiquette - Another email rant: Is there some place on the internet that outlines proper "Subject line" headings? There mus be a system out there that people use to be more efficient email senders. Not everything that comes into my mail box requires my immediate attention. I would love to educate myself and the people who send me emails on proper subject lines. Maybe something like: "Urgent Review: <<Title of document>>" "Decision Required: "<<Subject matter>>" just something for me to quickly scan the subject lines and decide which ones need my immediate attention. Anyone know of such email standards that exist out there?
Re: Subject line Etiquette Re: Subject line Etiquette - [quote="jvprosperity":btyoa0j1]Another email rant: Is there some place on the internet that outlines proper "Subject line" headings? There mus be a system out there that people use to be more efficient email senders. Not everything that comes into my mail box requires my immediate attention. I would love to educate myself and the people who send me emails on proper subject lines. Maybe something like: "Urgent Review: <<Title of document>>" "Decision Required: "<<Subject matter>>" just something for me to quickly scan the subject lines and decide which ones need my immediate attention. Anyone know of such email standards that exist out there?[/quote:btyoa0j1] Hi Andy, The only system I know of at the moment is the "Set Priority" feature on MS Outlook. It allows you to add an exclamation mark to flag the message as being of high, normal or low priority. However, I'd say that a "sender" is still better off using the phone rather than sending an email that's labeled "urgent".
Don't they know there are spammers out there? Don't they know there are spammers out there? - Just a rant.... I have a spam filter on my email, such that every day probably about 20 or more emails a day end up in my Bulk folder and I don't even see them. But I still see dozens of spam messages a day in my Inbox, and I recognize them by their titles, if they just say, "Hello," or "Hi" or some other generic title, I know it's spam and I just delete it without even opening it - as you must do. Today I got an email from someone, and the title was "wff". Just that. Not even capital letters. Normally I would have just deleted it without reading it, but fortunately I saw the name of the author, and it was a name I recognized, not a friend but an acquaintance - someone who works for the Williamsburg Film Festival. And the title "wff" was of course Williamsburg Film Festival. And I wonder how many businesses send out emails to potential customers with generic subject lines so that their stuff gets sent to the Trash file without even being looked at.
Re: Subject line Etiquette Re: Subject line Etiquette - [quote="jvprosperity":b50c4a20]Another email rant: Is there some place on the internet that outlines proper "Subject line" headings? There mus be a system out there that people use to be more efficient email senders. Not everything that comes into my mail box requires my immediate attention. I would love to educate myself and the people who send me emails on proper subject lines. Maybe something like: "Urgent Review: <<Title of document>>" "Decision Required: "<<Subject matter>>" just something for me to quickly scan the subject lines and decide which ones need my immediate attention. Anyone know of such email standards that exist out there?[/quote:b50c4a20] The only messages I get that say Urgent or Decision Required etc are spam. I tell people to put something relevant to their business with me in the subject line - this is especially important for the people who fall into my junk mail. Chris
Re: Don't they know there are spammers out there? Re: Don't they know there are spammers out there? - [quote="OmnivoreInk":utcjbiv6]Just a rant.... I have a spam filter on my email, such that every day probably about 20 or more emails a day end up in my Bulk folder and I don't even see them. But I still see dozens of spam messages a day in my Inbox, and I recognize them by their titles, if they just say, "Hello," or "Hi" or some other generic title, I know it's spam and I just delete it without even opening it - as you must do. Today I got an email from someone, and the title was "wff". Just that. Not even capital letters. Normally I would have just deleted it without reading it, but fortunately I saw the name of the author, and it was a name I recognized, not a friend but an acquaintance - someone who works for the Williamsburg Film Festival. And the title "wff" was of course Williamsburg Film Festival. And I wonder how many businesses send out emails to potential customers with generic subject lines so that their stuff gets sent to the Trash file without even being looked at.[/quote:utcjbiv6] Hi Barbara, Personally, I do my best to skim all the sender names and subject titles before deleting everything in my "bulk folder" because you never know if you're missing out on something. For instance, I had a friend whose email used to make it safely into my inbox, but then I later found a few of them in mislabeled as spam in the bulk folder.


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