Why won’t customers respond to your email messages? You probably make one (or some) of these mistakes.
For as much email that’s sent everyday, much of it gets less attention than old fashion postal mail. Customers and co-workers are inundated with email, so they ignore as much as they can.
Bad news if you need customers to pay attention to what you have to say, says business communication expert Janet Attard.
Avoid these email mistakes – and your messages should get read.
- Marking messages as “high importance” with exclamation points. It’s the equivalent of car alarms – no one notices them in parking lots anymore because they’re false alarms and annoying.
- Including too much detail. Email is meant to be a quick mode of communication. Lengthy explanations will cause readers to gloss over or delete. Phone calls are better for detail-oriented information.
- Changing the subject line. Customers often use the subject line to determine if they’ll open messages or not. Change it, and they won’t likely open it. On the flip side, it’s best to change a subject line when you start a new chain of messages on a different subject.
- Copying too many people. Many customers won’t read messages if they know they’ve been sent to the masses.
