In preparation to ramp as the best Account Manager Office Depot has ever had, I am reviewing content from experts such as Phillip Khan-Panni, Jill Konrad, Robert Clay and Jill Bastian. I felt it invaluable to summarize their content around “writing emails that will be read”:

(From http://marketingwizdom.com/archives/2882 ) The object of an email is NOT to get it opened and read. The object of an email is to get RESPONSE.
Positive response. Here are the “buttons” Robert Clay pushed to make me “click here” to get the free report and the answer to his headline question:

.He asked me provocative questions.
.He made me curious.
.The letter had value-driven engagement.
.The message had perceived value to me as a reader.
.The letter had a free “hook” offer that promised “value-first.”
.The letter had NO offer or obligation to buy anything.
.Clay offered new information.
.Clay offered success information.
.The letter offered something about or for ME!
.The letter had the lure of an “answer” about something I want.
.The letter met a now-need that I have (timing of the message). I want to know this, or have this, NOW.

…Why not study what makes your customers and prospective customers click.
What’s their button? What answers are they looking for? Where’s your value?… Every sales oriented email you send should answer the question, “Where’s the value?”

From Jill Konrad:
1.) Get rid of all verbiage that activates the delete response. Here are some serious offenders: exciting, state-of-the-art, solution, partner, leading edge, passion, unique and one-stop shopping.

2. Keep Your Message Simple- Your email needs to be less than 90 words. Use 2-sentence paragraphs so it can be scanned. Stick with common black fonts (no colors) and never include more than one link or attachment.

3. Align With Their Objectives- Research your prospect’s specific company, industry or position. Make sure your e-mail mentions an important business objective, strategic imperative, issue or challenge. Relevance is essential.
(Adding Phillip Khan-Panni here:) Start with a clear understanding of your proposition and its relevance to the reader. Lead with the strongest benefit. Focus on the reader, not yourselves, and minimise the use of I and We at the start of paragraphs. Phillip also made a suggestion to make emails look easy on the eye, and elaborate….

4. Focus on Immediate Priorities- Identify key business events that may be impacting your prospect’s priorities and tie your message into that.
Examples might be: relocations, mergers, management changes or new legislation.

5. Be an Invaluable Resource- Your product or service may be a commodity, but you’re not. In your e-mails, focus on the ideas, insights and information you can share that will be of value to your prospect in reaching their goals.

6. Craft Enticing Subject Lines- Your subject line determines if your message gets read. Avoid sales hype and focus on business issues such as:
“Quick question re: outsourcing initiative” or “Reducing product launch time.” (Adding Jill Bastian here:) 11 Spam Words to Avoid in Your Subject
Line:

1.Affordable
2.Apply Now
3.Additional Income/ Extra Income
4.Dear Friend
5.Free
6.Home Based/Work from Home
7.Mortgage Rates
8.Opportunity
9.Remove
10.Save $
11.Weight Loss
-Try to also avoid credit and free.

7. Launch a Campaign- Do eight to 12 touches (via e-mail and phone) over a four-to-six week time period, with each contact building off the previous one. Provide links to resources. Spotlight the value of changing from the status quo.

—–Original Message—–
From: Shannon Bryant [mailto:smbphotography@austin.rr.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2011 12:25 PM
To: Shannon Bryant
Subject: How To Write Emails That Will Be Read

In preparation to ramp as the best Account Manager Office Depot has ever had, I am reviewing content from experts such as Phillip Khan-Panni, Jill Konrad, Robert Clay and Jill Bastian.
I felt it invaluable to summarize their content around “writing emails that will be read”:

(From http://marketingwizdom.com/archives/2882 ) The object of an email is NOT to get it opened and read. The object of an email is to get RESPONSE.
Positive response. Here are the “buttons” Robert Clay pushed to make me “click here” to get the free report and the answer to his headline question:

.He asked me provocative questions.
.He made me curious.
.The letter had value-driven engagement.
.The message had perceived value to me as a reader.
.The letter had a free “hook” offer that promised “value-first.”
.The letter had NO offer or obligation to buy anything.
.Clay offered new information.
.Clay offered success information.
.The letter offered something about or for ME!
.The letter had the lure of an “answer” about something I want.
.The letter met a now-need that I have (timing of the message). I want to know this, or have this, NOW.

…Why not study what makes your customers and prospective customers click.
What’s their button? What answers are they looking for? Where’s your value?… Every sales oriented email you send should answer the question, “Where’s the value?”

From Jill Konrad:
1.) Get rid of all verbiage that activates the delete response. Here are some serious offenders: exciting, state-of-the-art, solution, partner, leading edge, passion, unique and one-stop shopping.

2. Keep Your Message Simple- Your email needs to be less than 90 words. Use 2-sentence paragraphs so it can be scanned. Stick with common black fonts (no colors) and never include more than one link or attachment.

3. Align With Their Objectives- Research your prospect’s specific company, industry or position. Make sure your e-mail mentions an important business objective, strategic imperative, issue or challenge. Relevance is essential.
(Adding Phillip Khan-Panni here:) Start with a clear understanding of your proposition and its relevance to the reader. Lead with the strongest benefit. Focus on the reader, not yourselves, and minimise the use of I and We at the start of paragraphs. Phillip also made a suggestion to make emails look easy on the eye, and elaborate….

4. Focus on Immediate Priorities- Identify key business events that may be impacting your prospect’s priorities and tie your message into that.
Examples might be: relocations, mergers, management changes or new legislation.

5. Be an Invaluable Resource- Your product or service may be a commodity, but you’re not. In your e-mails, focus on the ideas, insights and information you can share that will be of value to your prospect in reaching their goals.

6. Craft Enticing Subject Lines- Your subject line determines if your message gets read. Avoid sales hype and focus on business issues such as:
“Quick question re: outsourcing initiative” or “Reducing product launch time.” (Adding Jill Bastian here:) 11 Spam Words to Avoid in Your Subject
Line:

1.Affordable
2.Apply Now
3.Additional Income/ Extra Income
4.Dear Friend
5.Free
6.Home Based/Work from Home
7.Mortgage Rates
8.Opportunity
9.Remove
10.Save $
11.Weight Loss
-Try to also avoid credit and free.

7. Launch a Campaign- Do eight to 12 touches (via e-mail and phone) over a four-to-six week time period, with each contact building off the previous one. Provide links to resources. Spotlight the value of changing from the status quo.

Times have changed. If you graduated college in the 90’s or prior, you are probably needing to change your writing style. The inventions of email and mobile require more concise writing. But it is still in my 1994 college textbook that I find the best rules to refer back to. In, “SuccessfulWriting at Work,” Phillip C. Collin provides guidelines. He says:

1.)Write sentences that tell who does what to whom or what:

-The subject-verb-object is the clearest sentence pattern. Start your sentence with a subject, and don’t put unnecessary words before it.

2.)Avoid complex or lengthy sentences.

- Replace wordy phrases or clauses withshorter synonyms.

- Remove unnecessary words and watch for redundancies (ie: advance forward can be changed to simply advance).

3.)Combine short and choppy sentences.

4.)Use strong, active verbs rather than verb phrases using verbs disguised as nouns.

-Don’t add a suffix (-ation, -ance,-ment, -ence) to your verbs; use direct verbs such as determine instead of determination.

5.)Avoid piling up modifiers in front of a noun.

-For example:

Crowded: The ordinance contract vehicle identification plate had to be checked against inventory numbers.

Spaced: The ordinance contract number on the vehicle identification plate had to be checked against the inventory numbers.

6.)Avoid unnecessary that/which clauses.

-That/which clauses using some sort of verbto be (is, are, was, were) are infamous for adding words, but not meaning.

7.)Use bullets and numbering to organize your thoughts.

What also has changed in these current decades is the exposure to our writing. In this social age, when we write, our readers often don’t know us. So we need to watch the impression we make, and proof read everything a few times. Put into a proofing software such as Microsoft Word. Make sure to look for common errors such as using the word principle when you mean principal. Use semicolons right, or don’t use them at all. Make sure what you’ve written makes logical sense; this is sometimes easier said than done! Review for the above seven rules. These rules are hard to follow if you aren’t practiced. This is the main reason I blog and tweet, to practice. But I also like how Phillip suggests we look for the underlined words above, then we can more easily review for these rules.

Regardless of your company size, if a sales or marketing professional thinks they shouldn’t get involved in social media, they are mistaken. How are they going to learn their competitor’s offerings to know how to compete? How are they going to accelerate learning the initiatives of their clients and how their product offerings can help? How are they going to accelerate referral relationships? Sales has to know they are a voice for their company, and marketing can help them understand social media policy, strategy and vision in the case they want to contribute.

My opinion is social media participation should be mandatory for all sales and marketing drivers. As Mike Volpe of Hubspot says, “if you are not building your fan base now you are basically dooming yourself on SEO in the future.” Every tweet that follows the company’s vision and strategy in some way directs a company to growth. The more content, the better and more relevant it is, the better a company’s following. The better a company’s following, the better the leads and referrals. Then it’s also how sales and marketing nurtures these leads that they will effect the bottom line.

I was honored to learn more about video marketing from my talks with Invodo, and am inspired to write my findings.

Prospects are doing more research and even making more purchases online these days. Video makes remote products tangible. But video also increases the likeliness that a prospect will get to your page, stay on it, and buy from it: http://www.invodo.com/html/resources/video-statistics/. If your audience is the more affluent, surveys say video is more influential to
them.

I wanted to summarize my findings for other potential employers that don’t have video on their site, or want to get into video. Most of these companies are SMB’s, whereas Invodo helps enterprises with video. So I asked Invodo’s Director of Marketing, Russ Sommers, to point me to the content leaders and resources for SMB video. Here’s what he said:

“The best resource I can point you to is http://www.reelsocialmedia.com/The-17-Essential-Tools-You-Need-To-Produce-Your-Own-Videos.pdf,”17 Essential Tools” by the guys at ReelSocialMedia. It covers guerilla-style production. It gives what’s needed for a non-video person to produce good quality video and highlights the key issues to watch for. Most SMB companies host on YouTube or Vimeo as free, good-enough hosting solutions that can be
embedded in a web page. Brightcove is a publishing-oriented platform that, at
$99/month is used by some SMBs. This is neat too: RT @chiefmartec: How to Market Your Business With Video http://t.co/QTKLg9tT.”

I hope you will consider video as a strategy to separate yourself from your competition. And if you are an enterprise, or even medium sized company, consider Invodo.