Please Help! My apologies to 300+ friends and business associates who received an email from a mischievous server in Germany that hijacked my email address book. I too received and opened this email with the subject line: ‘Please help!’ I quickly discovered that hundreds of people actually opened and read this fraudulent email which requested $3200 be sent to me to bail me out of a compromising situation. Supposedly I had lost my money, passport, cell phone and was stranded in Malaysia. I must admit, the plea was more realistic than the email requests from a senior counsel general of a third world country requesting assistance that will earn the recipient $10,000,000 in cash. At 4AM, on the morning the email was sent, I started getting calls at my home from my friends on the east coast. Intellectually my friends knew it was a hoax. Emotionally, they wanted to make sure I was all right. The calls and emails continued for more than two weeks. Lessons I learned from this mass email distribution: The majority of people who responded by email did so from a mobile device. Emails are getting to the readers on an immediate basis. Take one look at a group of business people with bowed heads and busy fingers and you know the mobile device has an addictive hold on an ever-increasing percentage of the connected population. Another interesting aspect was the variety of comments I received. The exact same email sent to everyone produced comments of me getting arrested, mugged, and imprisoned in Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Asia, China and Australia. Everyone got the amount of money requested, $3200, correct. Evidently, people focus and remember money more than locations and situations. This entire episode reinforced the fact that email communication and advertising is alive and well. A broad range of business people, including a couple of OEM Presidents and other industry heavyweights actually opened, read and responded to me. If a malicious stranger from Germany can create a readable email, imagine what people from your own company can accomplish. Email, when managed properly, is a very cost-effective way to spread your message. Here is a refresher course of dos and don’ts of business email. Correct and current email addresses should be treated as small pieces of gold. Seek, capture, record and use these individual threads of useful information. Encourage all your employees to work to increase and share the email addresses in their database while checking the appropriateness of the email list. This requires both farming and weeding. Web sites and emails can be two of the strongest or weakest areas of your businesses expertise and are a direct reflection of your company. Before you start an email campaign, make sure your Web site is up to date, visually appealing, provides appropriate information and displays an accurate representation of your company. Upon receiving a take-action-now email, the reader will often investigate your Web site first, and more customers will probably visit your Web site than your showroom. Take some time to actually look at each page or link of your Web site. Is there out dated information? Are some of your offered links no longer accessible? Are your most current products being showcased? Are there photos and bios of your management team? Are your company address, phone numbers, email address, contact information and business hours easily found on line? Here is a list of guidelines to consider when using email as an economical marketing and advertising tool. • Systematically and continually collect email addresses of your current and prospective customers. Encourage employees to gather businesses cards and forward email addresses from appropriate sources. Regularly add these addresses to your email list. • Make your subject line short and accurate • Have the outgoing email address identifiable as coming from your company or a specific person from your company • To avoid being diverted by scam filters, avoid using in your subject or text of your document, ‘Discount, free, $$$, save’ or other suspect words. • Enable one click unsubscribe, and double click opt-in subscription process. This will protect your company legally from being considered a spammer as well as maximize the professional business tenor of your communication with your customers. • Consistency will strengthen your brand recognition and build up anticipation. Send your email messages at the same time on the same day of the week / month. • Find a balance between familiarity and over-exposure. Consider whether a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly email is most appropriate for your business and audience. • Statistically, Tuesday or Wednesday will increase the frequency of your correspondence being opened and read. • Send specialized holiday messages a couple of days before or after the event. Holiday acknowledgements can add additional interest and relevancy to your message. • When setting up a new requested subscriber, build immediate trust with three communications: Automatically acknowledge and thank for a new subscription within one hour, send your most recent communication, e-newsletter or link to a special offer with 24 hours, and follow up within one week with one additional communication. • Create or buy a canned template with your logo, complete company name, Web site, telephone number, email address, and unsubscribe link. Be professional by opening with a person’s name when using an email software package. • Short and informative messages have a better chance of being read than long and involved communications. • Provide something worth reading such as useful information, a specially priced offer or business appropriate humor or trivia. • Track your list. How many are opened, bounced, responded to, etc., and from there, refine your email list. • Offer an ‘email a friend’ link with emailed newsletters or other educational material. This will aid in the gathering of new email addresses. It is an excellent way to gain referred contacts. Your email campaign can start small and be handled manually in-house. As you gain email addresses, it can be outsourced for a simple periodic emailing of your information to a few hundred addresses for under $10 per month. It can grow and be expanded to customized newsletters going to tens of thousands of subscribers. Every email that is sent by anyone representing your company should have a pre-designed, customized signature that includes your company full color logo and complete contact information. Additionally, your company’s slogan or motto, upcoming event, color logos of your key OEM authorization and certifications can be included. A green statement or earth sustainability pledge are becoming increasingly popular as part of the signature lines. It’s all part of branding and non-intrusive advertising. I regret that my friends and business associates became part of an international email hoax. However, my belief in the power of email advertising was expanded. I am often involved in business discussions about the value of advertising via email versus US postal service, yellow pages, print ads, Internet banner ads, etc. This email hacking situation proved to me that people do open, read and respond to their email. Even when the subject matter is “Please help!” Ronelle Ingram, author of Service With A Smile, also teaches service seminars. She can be reached at ronellei@msn.com