7 Easy Ways To Get A Faster Response To Your Email

You spend a huge chunk of your day sending and receiving emails. Popular, quick, and convenient, emails have revolutionized business communications. Here are 7 easy ways to improve your email's readability and ensure a faster response from the recipient:

1. Make sure the recipient knows it's from you. Why would they open the email if they can't discern who it's from? Make sure your full name appears in the FROM field. If your email address, your first name only, or a nickname appear in that field, the recipient may not know it's from you.

2. Keep the formatting simple. Remember, even though it may look great in your email client, it may look like gobbledegook in your recipient's email client. People don't usually take the time to read a butchered email.

3. Don't have a lengthy and distracting signature. Two to four lines will suffice. Fight the temptation to include several paragraphs, quotations, or your biography. Provide your readers with a link to your website and trust that they'll click on that link if they want more information about you. Also, if you do choose to go with a longer signature, do not include it on your replies. No need to keep throwing the magnum opus in their faces throughout the entire email exchange.

4. Only one subject per email. If you want the recipient to respond now instead of later, don't give them more than one thing to do. If you clutter up your email message with multiple tasks for the recipient, you make it easier for them to procrastinate. Rather than sending out one message that covers multiple subjects, send out multiple messages, each with its own discreet subject.

5. Tell them what you need in the first sentence. Put your request at the top of the email and let the recipient decide if they need more information. If you give your recipient paragraphs, or even pages, of information that they have to wade through before they get to your request, chances are they will put off reading it until later. Worse yet, they may delete it without getting to the end because they think it's irrelevant.

6. Keep it short. If it takes longer than a couple of minutes for a recipient to read your email, they will likely delay reading it until they feel they have more time. If they set it aside, you run the risk that they may never get back to it! Some productivity experts advise you keep your email down to five sentences or less. Consider using a different form of communication (phone, meeting, formal report) if you don't think a short email can get the job done.

7. Tell them your request is urgent or time-sensitive. Most people want to be helpful, and they need help prioritizing. Be straightforward, but don't over do it. If you're constantly telling people you need things immediately, they may begin ignoring your emails. Say exactly how time-sensitive something is. For example, "It's not urgent, but I do need this by the end of the week." Then, track the request in a time management system and follow up on it.

Happy emailing!

8 One Liners That Stick

What makes for good communication? Results. George Bernard Shaw once said that “The problem with communication … is the illusion that it has been accomplished.”

Effective communicators know how to use good one-liners to their advantage. Mike St. Pierre over at lifehack.org created a list of 8 one-liners with staying power.

Of the list, I think the most useful is this one:

"Bond. James Bond." It may be one of the most famous one-liners out there, but we can all learn a lesson from it and use it. Repeating your name twice (first or last, depending on what you want people to remember) is a guaranteed way to make your name stick.

Go check out the rest of the article for the remaining 7 one-liners.

The Biggest Tagline Mistake, And How To Avoid Making It

Taglines work. I remember several great ones from marketing generations past. I bet you do, too. Decades later, you can probably still name the brands these taglines represented:

• Where's the beef?
• Let your fingers do the walkin'.
• Melts in your mouth, not in your hands.
• Don't leave home without it.
• We try harder.

How did you do? Chances are, if you're at least thirty years old, you knew them all. Why? What makes these taglines great?

Well, for one thing, they're succinct. No long-winded proverbs or mission statements here. The average number of words in the taglines above is five. Five words! According to most marketing surveys, you definitely want a tagline to be less than ten words long, with five to seven words being ideal.

So, what else set these taglines apart?

Of the five listed above, at least three directly reflect how the company positioned itself against its competition. A good tagline communicates to the world the value of your brand. It lets everyone know why your company is unique.

Now, lets take a look at a few embarrassing ones from my personal Tagline Hall of Shame.

• An auto manufacturer once ran with "We put people in front of cars."
• Playtex tampons tried out "Is that a Playtex under there?"
• And Jimmy Dean sausages used "Eat Jimmy Dean" for a while.

These taglines seem obviously bad. How did the taglines make it out of the marketing departments of these companies and into the world marketplace?

They succumbed to the biggest tagline mistake you can make: they forced it. In my years as a marketer and copywriter, I've given this a lot of thought. The biggest temptation a new company or a company seeking to re-brand itself makes is to rush. Companies feel they must have a tagline before launching their new radio or magazine ad.

May I please set the record straight?

It's okay to wait for a good tagline to happen. And, yes, they do happen. Good taglines have a life of their own, and they seem to know when they'll be created. The greatest taglines happen by accident and not in a "tagline brainstorming session."

You know it's true. So, relax. Instead of hitting the PANIC button and forcing the birth of a bad tagline, take a deep breath and run that ad. Perhaps hearing some of the responses to your ad can get the creative juices flowing.