We all use email every day. And while social media gets most of the buzz, it’s really email (social media’s less sexy roommate) that gets the work done, day in and day out. All this means is, if you own and operate a small business, you need to be sure that you’re taking full advantage of this wonderful tool.
Pay attention to how you come across when you send emails to other people. Here are two big mistakes that I see – over and over and over again – working with clients:
- Not using a custom domain for email. You may not know this, but if you own a domain (e.g., www.mycompany.com), you have the ability to create email addresses (name@mycompany.com) that use that domain name (and at no additional cost).
Unfortunately, I frequently see emails from small businesses and solo professionals who use Gmail, Verizon, Comcast, Yahoo!, and other providers to act as their domain. An example is companyname@gmail.com.
Not only does this approach paint you as a hobbyist (as opposed to someone who’s really in business) it also represents a missed opportunity to help people find your website. When you create an email address that uses your custom domain, you are constantly advertising your company, as well as where it can be found on the web.
- A generic or hard-to-understand “from” line. Most of us pay a lot of attention to the “subject” line of our emails.
It’s the headline and the thing that entices people to open our emails in the first place.
But the “from” line is even more important. Why? Because that tells the recipient who is sending the email in the first place. If it’s from a friend, relative, client, or company I do business with, I’m very likely to open it (regardless of the subject line). If I don’t recognize the sender, I’m very likely to think it’s spam and delete it.
For example, I got an email message from “Suzie,” with a blank subject line. Well, I don’t know any Suzie. I was therefore, one neatly manicured finger away from deleting it until, at the last second, I remembered a woman named Suzanna who works with one of my clients. Sure enough, she was sending me some important information. It made me wonder: How many of her emails are regularly deleted?
Another common faux pas of this sort is when the “from” line is simply an email address. That’s okay if your full name is part of your address, but not so good if your e-mail address is something like halolola576@gmail.com.
What’s the solution? Try something like this: First and Last Name | Company. My first and last name, followed by my company name, either of which may help you recognize who I am. (You’ll find the vertical separator line – “|” – above the backslash, near the top right of your keyboard.)Like any tool, email is only as good as the way in which it’s used. Polish up your approach and start getting the full benefit from this important aspect of your business!
Things I Can’t Live Without: My iPhone
I cannot imagine losing my phone or being without it for an extended period. So it is definitely something I cannot live without!
It’s important not because it’s an iPhone but because of what it allows me to do and one of those reasons is – to stay connected to loved ones and friends no matter how far apart we are and it helps me to do just that. Yes, I’m also connected to clients, fellow Virtual Assistants, and colleagues.
If it’s not a phone call, it’s a text, an email, or a video chat (depending on the platform). Being able to communicate with my daughter and granddaughters (the older ones that can talk 😊) – cuties on the right, my mom, and other families and friends, is a wonderful thing and I could not imagine not being able to do that. As a matter of fact, I can imagine it and it is not pretty! 😫
