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Using E-mail Effectively... Part One
 
E-mail has become the preferred way to communicate with family, friends, and customers. But are you using e-mail to your best advantage? People receive a large number of e-mails everyday and in order to be effective you must be sure they are opening yours.

Here are some basic rules to keep in mind when using E-mail to market your business.

Your E-mail Subject Line: This is what people use to determine if they are going to read your e-mail or just delete it. To be effective your subject line should:

  • Capture your reader’s attention while being brief.
  • Build credibility
  • Say what the e-mail is about

Use the Blind Carbon Copy Feature (BCC): Have you ever received an e-mail where the first couple of pages were filled with the e-mail addresses of everyone the e-mail was sent to?  How did this make you feel?  I tend to have two reactions: 1) Anger that this person just gave all those people I don’t know my e-mail address and 2) that it is junk mail and nothing that I need. This is not a good way to introduce your business. Use the BCC feature whenever you send the same e-mail to several people. Or better yet, use a software application that allows you to send a personalized message to each recipient.

E-mail Formatting: E-mails should be short, sweet and to the point. If you have more then one topic to cover, announce this at the beginning of your e-mail. People tend to skim their e-mail first and then if they find it at all interesting they will then go back and read it more thoroughly.

E-mails should have proper spelling and grammar. Either use the spell checker that comes with your e-mail program, or write the e-mail in your data processing program and then cut and paste it into your e-mail. The proper use of upper and lowercase lettering and not using e-mail shorthand is also important.

E-mail correspondences are not as formal as business writing.  The tone of the e-mail is more like a conversation. In general, you should:

  • Keep your paragraphs to less then seven lines and make your point in the first paragraph.
  • Avoid using fancy formatting such as graphics, different fonts, italics, and bold, because many e-mail programs cannot display those features.
  • Choose your words carefully. E-mail can be easily forwarded on to others or misdirected to the wrong person.

E-mail Reply Tips: When replying to an e-mail do not include the entire original message. Do include enough of the original message to refresh the recipient’s memory.

Use Your Signature Files: These files are attached to your e-mail and sent every time you send an e-mail. These files should include your name, business name, web address and phone number. 33% of all Web site "hits" come from following links in e-mail signature files.

Before You Click "Send": Before you send an important e-mail, you should send a test message to yourself or a colleague.  Check to be sure that the text is formatted properly and displays the way you want.  Also check for typos, errors, or omissions. 
 
I keep hearing about the failures of the "dot-coms". Does this mean the Internet is not a good way to market my business?

The Internet is alive and well. Some of the companies using it, however, are not doing as well. Why? First, let’s define a few terms:

Dot-com – a company existing only on the Internet with no "brick and mortar" storefront.

E-commerce – an online storefront where customers can purchase items on a website and pay online.

Once e-commerce became widely available to the masses, many people became excited by the possibility of making money by selling products on the Internet. They formed "companies" which did not actually stock the items for sale, like a "brick and mortar" store, but simply took orders over the Internet, purchased these items from their suppliers, and shipped them out to their Internet customers. In many cases, these "companies" were simply one or two people working out of their house, since there was no need for a warehouse. There was no office, no store that a customer could drive to and "browse the shelves". In many cases, the only contact information available on the website was an e-mail address. The mailing address, if one was even available, was a P.O. box. Thus, these "companies" could appear to be large wholesale/retail facilities when in fact none existed. These companies, the ones that existed only on the Internet, are the definition of the "dot-coms" you read about.

Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that these companies are not as inexpensive to operate as the operators expected. Huge advertising budgets, low markups on the goods sold, and too many competitors make it difficult at best to compete as a "dot-com". Additionally, consumers are (and continue to be) wary of purchasing a product on the Internet with no way of knowing where the company is, or what to do if they are not satisfied with their purchase. There may never be a substitute for being able to walk into a store and pick up an item, talk to a knowledgeable salesperson, and have a high level of customer service that has come to be expected from a high quality retailer.

We at Virtualtech believe that the companies that will survive and prosper on the Internet are those which have a "real presence" such as an existing wholesale or retail facility. Your website should be an extension of your other marketing materials, answering questions that the potential customer may have and making them comfortable doing business with you. Knowing that you have an actual store or similar facility with real, knowledgeable people will only add to their level of comfort. The successful companies will have their Web site populated with their address, telephone numbers, photos of their facility, and photos of the people who make up the company. Those companies will not be seen as "dot-coms" by the public, but instead will be seen as legitimate businesses who believe in customer service and satisfaction. And if you do offer e-commerce on your Web site, the knowledge that a customer can get in his car and drive to your store with his concerns will go a long way toward having quality, satisfied customers who will be comfortable doing business with you.

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What skills do I need to design a Website?
 
One of the many Web related services we at Virtualtech are often asked to provide is the training necessary for a business owner to design and maintain their own website. While we understand that businesses are always looking for ways to cut their costs, we encourage business owners to think long and hard about the level of training involved to design and maintain a quality, effective website.

Tools exist and are readily available to help the novice website designer quickly put together a site. Programs such as Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia Dreamweaver, and NetObjects Fusion allow anyone with basic word processing skills to "point and click" their way to a website which can look attractive and have enough cool "bells and whistles" to give the site a bit of "flash" appeal.

OK, so now you have spent some time designing a site which looks just the way you want it to. Good enough? Not hardly.

You would be surprised at the number of people who design websites, thinking that they look and function exactly as they should, and then find that they look and function completely differently on other people’s computers. Why is this? The biggest reason is failing to understand the skills needed to design a site which works the same on all computers: whether PC or Mac, whether connected to the Internet through a high-speed broadband connection or a slow phone line modem, whether viewed in Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator…. And the list goes on.

Below you will find a list of the basic skills you should have before you consider designing or maintaining your website. If you are not familiar with the terms, you should seriously consider hiring a professional to do your site work for you. Remember, the quality of your site reflects the quality of your business… and that is something that your competitors take into consideration when they hire a website design firm to handle their site. To succeed on the Web, you will need to "play to their level".

Directory structure. One of the basic skills necessary to manage a quality website is to understand the relationship between files and folders (directories) and how to create and manipulate each. Organization plays a key role in the layout of a website, and the behind-the-scenes organization of files and directories plays a critical role in a site’s reliability. For example, many novice designers do not realize that the images on a Web page are not actually part of the page, but in fact are simply linked from a different directory on the server.

Filenames. You may have run into Web pages whose addresses looked like a mishmash of "%"s and "36"’s. These designers do not understand that there are only certain characters which are valid in Web filenames, and that "YourDomain.com" may not be the same as "yourdomain.com". Your browser attempts to resolve the filename to something it understands, which can return a name like http://www.yourdomain.com/bobs%20page%36/~home%20page.html. At best it looks unprofessional… at worst, the visitor’s computer can’t access the page, so they simply click on to a competitor’s site.

HTML structure. The programs mentioned above do an admirable job of creating the HTML programming necessary to display your website without requiring you to code the HTML by hand. They are not perfect, however, and understanding basic HTML terms like <table>, <td>, <img src>, and <a href> will make the difference between a site that may function correctly and a site that will function correctly. Viewing your site on two different computers may produce the effect of completely reorganizing your text and pictures on your page. Correct usage of HTML tags is the only way to minimize these display problems, as well as problems related to the next two areas.

Browser platform. Your site may look great on your computer running the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer. However, you also need to take into account the fact that a large percentage of Internet users do not use IE, but instead may use Netscape Navigator, Opera, or AOL’s custom browser… all which display Web pages slightly differently depending on HTML structure. What looks great in Internet Explorer may look terrible in Netscape Navigator, or in extreme cases may just show up as a blank screen. Would you buy ad time on a TV station which could only be received by 50% of your potential customers?

Screen resolution. You may have the latest 21" monitor displaying at a resolution of 1600x1200 pixels. What about the user who refuses to upgrade from his old 14" monitor at 640x480? There are more of those old monitors floating around than you might think…and many of them are in the offices of people who do a great deal of purchasing.

Fonts. That beautiful flowing script font you used to design your home page will probably look like a typewritten letter on many computers. There are only 9 fonts (out of the hundreds available) which are considered to be universally Web-safe. You should know what you can and can’t use.
Images. The Web is filled with sites which contain beautiful full color images, and of course you want your site to look just like theirs. However, your images take forever to download and do not look as sharp as your competitor’s. You need to understand the principles behind scanning and optimizing pictures to be displayed on the Web. Factors include minimum and maximum resolutions, correct image file types (there are only two out of the several possible formats that will even work for a Web page, and they are used for two different effects), and file size (determines how long your page will take to download). It is critical to be able to manipulate your images to fit your page’s display needs.
Navigation. How easy is it for a visitor to find the page they are looking for? The navigation should allow the visitor to "click" easily from the page they are on to the page they want to go to. He or she should not have to click through 6 pages to get to the one desired page. Conversely, you also do not want to have links to 40 different pages from your home page.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol). The process of transferring your Web pages and associated files from your local computer to your Web server can be a tricky process. To avoid problems with broken images, "file not found" errors, etc. it is imperative that you understand the FTP process. Along with understanding the relationship between files and directories on your Web server, you may also need to transfer the files in very specific formats (ASCII vs binary) to avoid corrupting your files.

Marketing. It is important to design your Web site so that it is attractive and easy to navigate for your potential customers. However, it is equally important to design your site to make it "attractive" to search engines. Items such as text to image ratios, link structure, relevance of content to keywords, and placement of text on the specific pages are all important factors on where your site ranks on search engines… and you want to be above your competitors’ Web sites, not below.

If you are not comfortable with the above terms and associated skills, perhaps it is time to sit back and make a decision. If you are willing to commit to learning the necessary skills listed… and you will not find them in any pre-packaged software solution… then you have a chance of designing a website which will be viewed as "professional" by your visitors. If the terms above were not familiar to you, you may want to consider the importance of your company’s professional image versus the chance of publishing a site which may detract from that image you worked so hard to achieve.

(920) 954-1923
(800) 474-7001
tammy@virtualtech.com
http://www.virtualtech.com