What started in the late 90’s as “Casual Friday’s” is now standard dress code all week long for many working professionals. Just as fashion shifts to be more relaxed, so have email communications. Have you noticed? Messaging has become much less stilted, more familiar and conversational. We call it business casual email.

Case in point is an email I received from the President, Barack, with a one-word subject line: “Hey”.  The brief message was an appeal for an end of year online donation. I was a prime target because I supported Barack back in 2008 with a micro-donation. Yes, I know Barack didn’t actually write that email. Still, the extreme casualness of it intrigued me. I asked others what they thought. As it turns out, most actually like the colloquial approach because it grabbed their attention.

It inspired me to run an experiment. I signed up to receive email from the Republican primary candidates. I figured this would be a fun way to collect a group of emails to examine.

As the campaign emails arrived, I filed them into a folder and am only just now looking at them as a group to write this post. I only received emails from Mitt and Rick; I didn’t receive emails from Newt and Ron and I’m still not sure why.

Anyway, scan the email subject lines below and take note of the following:

• simple language
• one to three words max
• mostly lowercase
• written as you might to a friend
• insider references

The email subject lines all strike a very casual tone. However, the message style varies by person. Summed up:

• Barack’s two messages are succinct, text-only, including one or two hyperlinks. One greeting is “Friend” and the other is personalized with my name. Signoffs are simple: “To 2012” and “Thank you”.
• Mitt’s two messages are also brief and both include links to video.  They open with “Friend,” and close expressing thanks.
• Rick’s nine messages are published in patriotic image-laden red-white-and-blue html formats (with the exception of one text-only message). None contain a salutation; otherwise, they resemble letters, complete with his scanned signature in closing.

Stripping away politics, what can we learn to apply to our own communications with prospects and customers?

• Know your target audience
  Wildly different interpretations of business casual attire create wrinkles in corporate dress codes. The same is true for business casual email. Rick’s formal letter message body was likely carefully crafted to resonate with his base. Beware: coming across as too familiar could be as off-putting as wearing flip-flops in some workplaces.
  When in doubt, err on the conservative side of business casual.
• Be personal
  All of the subject lines in my sampling looked like they came from a friend. Subject lines that read more like titles are out of fashion.
  Next time you send a prospecting email, try adopting a more casual, friendly tone.
• Spark curiosity
  “Wheaties”. That subject line is both thought provoking and timely for Rick’s constituents who recognize its reference to a positive comment made by a CNN consultant after a debate.
  Be relevant by relating your email messages to current events in your prospects’ and customers’ worlds.
• Connect emotionally
  Video is a very effective way to connect emotionally, as Mitt’s communications team knows. Video need not be over-produced. In fact, we are huge proponents of more ad hoc and authentic business casual video—a term first coined by Cliff (Pollan), VisibleGains CEO and written about by David (Meerman Scott) in the latest edition of his book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR. 
  Follow up your next meeting with an impromptu video message and include meeting notes and other supporting documentation. It’s easy. Got an iphone? Download our free app from the itunes store.

Take note of the business casual emails landing in your Inbox. Experiment with your tone, word choice and video to connect more personally with prospects and customers.

Happy Holidays from the VisibleGains Team!

An email at the top of the funnel is a compressed version of a face-to-face chat that you wish you could have. To be effective, you need to combine:

1. A pleasant hello (Subject Line)
2. One simple concept that someone wants to understand (Body)
3. A non-threatening way for someone to learn more (Additional Content via link or attachment)

Just like in the real-world, there are subtleties in the approach and execution of each of these that can lead to great success or complete failure.

SUBJECT LINES

Creating email subject lines can be intimidating. However, it need not be if you follow four guiding principles:

#1: Start your conversation in the subject line.
#2: Be personal.
#3: Offer something of value.
#4: Make the reader curious to learn more.

See our full blog post on subject lines.

EMAIL BODIES

Most email bodies at the top of the funnel fail because they include too much marketing gobbledygook and they assume that your prospect cares about you or your offering. They don’t. They simply care about meeting their own goals and learning more about their areas of interest. Here are the key things you should do here:

#1: Pick one concept to share
#2: Convey it simply and clearly
#3: Plant a seed with a 1 sentence value proposition
#4: Be brutal when editing (based on an honest assessment from an external source)

Of the above items, the most important is the last one. Listen to someone you trust answer the question “How would you react to this?” or use one of the tools from a market-leader, like:

• David Meerman Scott’s Gobbledygook Grader – http://gobbledygook.grader.com/
• Jill Konrath’s Value Proposition Generator – http://snapselling.com/resources/

ADDITIONAL CONTENT

When it comes to additional content, it’s hard to predict what the prospect really wants and how much time they really want to invest. The best approach is to combine:

• One short and focused item that you link to or attach that is an extension of the concept from the email body
• Within that one shared item (not in your email), you can also provide a few other links to other items that might pique their interest.

Think of it like the tasty morsel you are offered while wandering in the food court—you want them to take a bite and then take a look at other things that might be of interest. Patience here is critical—push too hard and they are gone.

Emails are more engaging when your message succinctly offers value, is conversational in tone and piques their interest with additional supporting content references.

188 billion email messages sent each day?! That’s a boatload of email!

We concur with the Infographic’s conclusion—email is here to stay. However, email is not always the most effective way to transmit your message. New(er) technologies—like Facebook and Twitter—introduce additional ways for humans to communicate. Think about what you’re trying to accomplish and select the best media available to you.

Email gets a deserved bad rap from marketing campaigns and spammers pushing unwanted messages that ignore communication fundamentals—such as this basic truth: the receiver must want to receive the message sent!

When your emails are written to be personal, with timely, relevant information the receiver really wants, they can help you build relationships one-to-one. Make your emails better and create relationships using VisibleGains.

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Embed this image on your site:
<a href=”http://www.visiblegains.com/is-email-dead” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.visiblegains.com/Portals/54582/Infographics/visiblegains-emaildead.png” alt=”Is Email Dead? [Infographic]” width=”550″ border=”0″></a><BR><div> courtesy of <a href=”http://www.visiblegains.com/”>Visible Gains</a></div>

I recently realized we’ve taken for granted a powerful shortcut for creating Outlook message templates that’s been in our company toolkit for a while. I was talking to a prospect recently about email workflows and described our process for sending multiple personalized emails containing a similar core message. He was amazed at this shortcut, even though it seems pretty obvious to me. I’m documenting it here to share more widely. Hopefully you already take advantage of using Outlook’s standard signature setup; this just kicks it up a notch for creating multiple personalized emails containing similar message text.

5 Steps to use Outlook’s signature function for creating email message templates

Step One: Click New E-mail

Step Two: Click Insert, then click Signature

Step Three: From drop-down menu, click “Signatures…”

Step Four: Click “New”. Enter a name, as well as text, for a complete email message. (Remember to also include an email signature in this “Signature” template entry!)

Step Five: Select the appropriate standardized message by “Signature” name each time you want to send similar text in a new email. Don’t forget to add a subject line and the first name of the person to whom you’re sending the message in the message body. Also, modify the templated text appropriately to ensure it’s relevant to the individual receiving it.

This shortcut saves me time when I want to repetitively send only slightly different emails over and over again–such as a follow-up to a hands-on product demo I’ve just given. Let me know how this shortcut works for you.

Got any Outlook tips to share with us?