Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Hi slallemand,

From my personal experience, I get a number of inquiries about my company and services and more often than not they consist of a non-descriptive subject line and a badly composed body with quite often no signature, company info or website.

I frequently ignore these requests. I may be passing up some business opportunities but I feel that if the requester cannot take the time to send me a professional request, than I am better off not doing business with them, it is a harbinger of things to come.

I am not insinuating that you guilty of currently commit these communication mistakes because I have not seen any of your correspondence, but take this information for what it is worth -make sure your emails are professional and clearly labeled with a clear subject line and a clear body that says exactly what you need and how they can do it, in as few a words as possible.


Also, not once have I received a follow-up email or a phone call from these requesters. Conversely, the opposite is true of requester who have become customers - they strongly pursued a dialogue from multiple angles.

So, pick up the phone a couple of days after emailing. Or drop a direct mail piece, or both.

Lastly, I am not aware of any off-the-shelf solutions which will effectively give you a 80% delivery and response rate.

I hope that helps.

This is exactly why we try to get prospects to fill out a contact form as opposed to sending free-form email. With a form, you can decide what fields are required and which are optional. You can also customize your auto-responders based on the content of the form.

However, if you are looking for an automated solution that will curve-fit replies to email based on the incoming email content, you should Google the term "email response management." You will have many vendors from which to choose.

Good luck.

Paul

I think spam is part of the cause of this. On one of the business email accounts I have for inquiries, I get dozens of spam messages for every true inquiry. It is tempting to add a spam filter on the address, but I don't trust that they would delete just the spam messages and still allow the real messages to get through. Perhaps the companies in question have added a spam filter and the emails are not making it past them.

So, unfortunately, spam is reducing the value of emails as a communication method.

ASn added benefit of forms (which weere mentioned above) is that they provide some protection to the email address of the person who recieves the form input, reducing the amount of spam they receive.