Why E-mail Gets Deleted: The Vital Importance of Proofreading

Today, I received an e-mail with the subject line "Why Customers Leave Suddenly: The Vital Important (sic) of Sequencing." The content turned out to be interesting and relevant, but I almost passed over the whole thing as junk mail.

I get a tremendous amount of junk mail, so I use automatic filtering to help cut down on the burden. Most of it gets diverted to the junk folder, but some manages to pass itself off as legitimate, so it stays in my Inbox.

In my business, I often get inquiries from total strangers. I can't tell what's worth reading from the sender's name, so I have to decide based on the subject lines. When I'm scanning my incoming mail, if I see garbled syntax and it doesn't look like a business inquiry, I just automatically assume it's not something I want to read. Hitting Delete is almost automatic.

In this case, I just knew the e-mail couldn't be from one of the real marketing mavens, because they know better than to send out e-mail without proofreading it. But I was wrong, and I was lucky. Just as my finger was poised over the Delete key, I glanced at the name of the sender and I was able to stop myself in the nick of time.

Maybe you think I'm exaggerating about how quickly I make a decision about whether to hit Delete or not. Let me assure you, I'm not! Who wants to waste time on this intrusive, annoying, insulting stuff? And because the filters aren't perfect, I go through my junk mail folder daily to double check that there's no legitimate e-mail there. Most of the time, it really is junk, so I scan the titles very rapidly, hitting Delete as I go.

The moral of this story is clear: if you want your e-mail to be read, don't tempt fate. Before you hit Send, proofread your subject lines.

Grabbing a Prospect's Attention

Has someone important forgotten you? A potential client perhaps?

Introducing yourself is the first way to start building rapport with people who are important to your business. Unfortunately, this task is often relegated to automatic signatures at the end of emails. Out of some misdirected sense of either modesty (why would anyone want to know more about me?) or vanity (everyone already knows who I am), many people simply neglect to introduce themselves at the beginning of a letter. Don't make that mistake.

Think of an introduction as the headline of a marketing message. Its function is to give someone an immediate, compelling reason for continuing to listen to you. If you're competing for a person's attention on the floor of an industrial exhibition with thousands of people milling around, or in a foot high stack of proposals on the desk of a partner in a venture capital firm, you’ve got tough competition.

Michel Fortin, the Success Doctor, once described a technique for headlines called "The Gapper." It involves focusing attention on the gap between a problem a prospect may or may not be aware of and its solution. In his article, Michel Fortin made it clear how to use it in a headline, but what does that mean for an introduction?

Let me give you an example of something I might say when introducing myself to a group at a presentation. "Hello. I'm Rochelle Treister, the CEO of Correct Me If I'm Wrong. I help people look as smart as they really are." Here I am not only reinforcing awareness of a problem that many people think they have, but also presenting them with a potential solution.

The same holds true when meeting people one on one. When I go to an industrial convention and there's someone whose business I would like, I find some basis for introducing myself and establishing myself as someone who can help. "Hi. I'm Rochelle Treister, CEO of Correct Me If I'm Wrong. I couldn't help noticing that the nametag they gave you has your company’s name spelled incorrectly. Your prospects are never going to be able to find you that way." A conversation about the importance of nametags and correct English generally evolves from there and I'm on my way to making a new customer.

In a letter to a potential customer, I might write

Dear Sir,
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Rochelle Treister and I’m CEO of Correct Me If I’m Wrong, a company dedicated to ensuring that the quality of a company’s English language business material is as great as the quality of its product or service.

Of course, a little appropriate humor never hurts. (Remember, I said appropriate humor.) For instance, if you’re in a foreign country and the people around you find it hard to pronounce your name, then you might help them out by saying, “Hi, my name is Itzhak but, if you prefer, you can call me Izzie – as long as you don’t call me late for dinner. I’m …” and here you would continue with your Gapper.

If you follow this simple formula, connecting your name with people’s problems and your solution, you will find that more people will not only remember your name, they’ll also remember why your solution can help them with a problem they’re experiencing. And when it comes to doing business, that’s exactly what you’re hoping to achieve.

Now, for the quiz – What’s the name of my company and how can I help you?

RANT!!! How Will They Find You?

I swear I'll never understand how people can overlook mistakes in their very own signatures when they see them over and over and over -- in the mail that they send and then in most of the mail that gets sent back to them. But I see it again and again.

Yesterday I was asked to do some work for a new client, and yes -- you guessed it -- there was a mistake in his signature.

But not just any pedestrian mistake such as a typo in his phone number, which would have been bad enough. Nope. This client of mine had managed to append his signature to an untold number of email messages with his own name misspelled.

Can you believe it?!

How did I find out? Well, luckily, the firm has one of those names that is a listing of its senior partners' names. You know, like Smith, Jones & Papadopoulos. I happened to notice that one of the names in the firm's name was almost (but not quite) the same as my client's name. Since he is a partner, there was a pretty good chance that it was his name, spelled correctly, on the letterhead. So I asked him. And it was.

So I say to myself, "Rochelle, give the guy a break. It's not so terrible."

But it is.

Imagine that you did it. How is a new client supposed to write you back and not make a fool of himself? It's a guaranteed way to make a person feel like an idiot when he finds out that he's spelled your name wrong. And then when he finally finds out, he has to change the misspelling in his phone directory, in his mail client, in his paper filing system, in announcements, in reports, in presentations, and on and on. Talk about annoying!

And how's he supposed to get information about you in Google or Dun & Bradstreet?

Errors in the company name, contact information, or website addresses are just as bad. They lead your customers on a not so merry chase as they try to find you. There goes more business down the drain.

So what's the moral of this story? Simple.

CHECK EVERY PART OF YOUR SIGNATURE VERY, VERY, VERY CAREFULLY.

And don't think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. One of my clients had a business card with 17 errors in it. Absolutely true! It happened three years ago, but he's still talking about it.