Email Marketing Tips

Is it a mystery? Is it failing technology? Or is it just rude? I often wonder.

In my daily business life, quite often I get emails in my inbox that are requests or queries that I take a few minutes to reply to. It takes a bit of thought, a bit of consideration and a little bit of time. Often my reply to a specific request is in the form of a proposal. The questioner asks if he can have ‘A’ and I reply yes, or no but you can have option ‘B.’

And then I get no response. Zero. Zilch.

Just a few words is all I ask in return. ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ would be a start. An explanation would be even better but it doesn’t always happen and I wonder why. Perhaps it’s a symptom of why some people seem to forget the rules of communication in email. They forget about punctuation, capitalisation, forming a coherent sentence. I read a few paragraphs of text recently where the writer had decided, apparently that full stops and new sentences were old hat and that they’d use hyphens instead. Interesting concept but it didn’t really work.

Of course it’s a symptom of the well documented general laziness with the English language that is creeping in. It starts badly in school and, in my experience, sometimes doesn’t ever improve. Good communication skills and the ability to formulate concepts and translate them into words are key skills for marketers and graphic designers but it appears to me that many new graduates are taking these abilities less and less seriously. It’s a shame. These skills are fundamental. Without them how can we communicate our ideas effectively and succinctly? How can we tune in to what people want and give it to them? I value them much more highly than I value a designer’s technical abilities with Photoshop.

I realise I’m taking a risk writing this. I know there are much cleverer people than me who have spotted all the grammatical errors I’m sure I’ve made, but at least I’m trying.