For most of us with important online business presence, email represents a vital aspect of our customer relationship management efforts. Email is almost always the first contact with new clients who come to us from our Internet sites. Email is frequently the method of second-contact as well.

Email has become the preferred daily communication method for millions of businesses, eliminating voice mail and interrupting phone calls during work hours. Like the telephone of the 20th century, email has become the 21st century’s tele-tool for lead generation, customer service and daily communication. Given its central importance in our businesses, you still would not believe how embarrassingly awful email communications remain today…

Hello sir,
How r u i need ur invitation card i want to attend ur seminar
i am to intrested plz send ur invitation card i hope ur sending me ur
invitation card thankss waiting ur reply
bye

First, let me assure any doubters that this is a real email: I get so many like it that I don’t have to make a single one up for this article (that’s why I’m writing it, in fact). Analyzing the above message, what can we say? First, that this person spends a lot of time in chat rooms, because the ’shorthand’ employed in the message is similar to the letter-for-word substitution methods that many chatters employ to save keystrokes. While appropriate in informal chat, shorthand is absolutely not meant for email. Would this very same person, had they sent a printed letter on company letterhead, have typed this way? I seriously doubt it. Now can you imagine what a reply from him to a customer must look like? Sale lost, I suspect. Of course, we sent him a complimentary invitation to our Exceptional Email Skills class.

Email is a very special form of communication; it’s the instant version of the business correspondence letter that used to take hours (in the days of typewriters and secretaries) or at least many minutes (in the days of word processors and printing) to compose, fit on letterhead, spell-check and proofread. Although it is more “instant” than these previous methods, it nonetheless plays the same role that they did: representing your company image, style and content to customers. For all intents and purposes, your email message is your company to the same extent that marketing materials, business cards, office decor, your dress, any of the ways you conduct your services are likewise your company.

What you say in your emails is just as important as when you say it. According to an online sampling by the National Association of REALTORS®, 85% of REALTORS® failed to reply to an initial inquiry about an online property listing within 48 hours. You can probably think of dozens of emails you have sent that have gone unanswered or, if replies did come, they were too late. These same people would never let their voice mail go unchecked for more than an hour or would gladly take a cell phone call in the middle of a crowded theater; yet they treat their online customers with a “when I get a chance” attitude. If you check your email only twice a week, to the customer, the message is clear: you just don’t take your online business seriously, so caveat emptor.

Whatever happened to the days of actual “correspondence?” Business schools should start dusting off those old copies of the AMA Style Guide for Business Writing and reopen their remedial business skills courses. Little things like writing “Dear” and “Thank you” in the heading and closing of the message; checking spelling; using capital letters; and general writing skills.

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