When you email a customer or coworker you want that email to be read and acted on. But with the volume of email flowing across the web it can be hard to get a customer’s attention.
Ben Decker, CEO of Decker Communications, offers four no-nonsense steps to ensure that customers read your email:
1. BLUF. This well known communication acronym stands for Bottom Line Up Front. The idea is to place conclusions, recommendations, or necessary actions at the beginning of the text rather than burying them at the end.
2. Share your personality. Try writing like you speak so that people feel you are communicating directly with them on a personal level.
3. Focus on the subject line. Most people do not write meaningful subject lines says Decker. He recommends including any required action and the due date in the subject line. For example, “Your signature needed by May 1.”
4. Check for typos. Your email is an extension of you and your organization, says Decker, take the extra time to make it shine.
More practical tips for service professionals appear in the June issue of Customer Communicator newsletter.