This photo of the day was taken a few days ago, there was just something about the concentration involved here that caught my attention.  I love all the different messages you can take out of the shot as well, less the email of course.
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Now, as a follow up, I am now going to go through some simple steps that will show you how to effectively answered your customer emails, and in the process, improve your [...]]]> In a previous post, Why Your Business Should Always Answer Email, I went through several reasons why you should answer your email.

Now, as a follow up, I am now going to go through some simple steps that will show you how to effectively answered your customer emails, and in the process, improve your customer service. It may not be physically possible to answer every single email you receive from your customers (although in my mind it should be), but using some of the methods below might help to improve the quality of customer service your business provides.

It may also improve your ASP (average sales price) on eBay, improve your sales revenue on your eCommerce store store, and also might change the way customers view your business, so crank up that inbox and hit the reply button and remove one of the easier ways to keep your customers happy.  Returning email is a simple thing and probably one of the easiest ways to please, or irritate a customer, depending on if you actually answer that email or not.

Reduce the Number of Emails You Receive

Yes, that is the first way to effectively handle a higher volume of email. Lower the volume. There are so many ways to reduce the actual number of emails you receive (other than just deleting them) that this one step may bring your email volume down to a manageable level.

Check for emails that repeat the same question. If you are getting the same question over and over it might be that you haven’t addressed that properly on your website or storefront. An easy solution to this problem is to just create an FAQ page and post it in a high visibility spot. A good rule of thumb might be if you receive the same question more than three times you should probably add it to your FAQ page.

Do Not Post Your Email Address on Multiple Pages

Don’t post your email address everywhere. You do want your customers to be able to get a hold of you, but you don’t want it to be so easy that they will just shot off an email without doing any reading whatsoever. Most people don’t really do this anymore anyway, but look at your store and see how many places you might have your email address listed.

If you have to post your email address, only do it on your contact page, and if you can, use a contact form instead of an email address. Posting an email address on your web page is also an invitation for spammers to send you even more email, so if you do post it, do not use a mailto link and type it out in full form like chipseo [at] gmail dot com if you need to post your address online.

Use an Email Client with Mobile Access

This doesn’t necessarily mean check your email on your mobile phone (which is nice if you can), but rather try to use an email client that can be checked easily while you are traveling or out of the normal office environment. Preferably you want to be able to check your email regardless of what computer you are currently using.

Email clients have come a long way. You can use your corporate accounts on the road with your Blackberry, you can access gmail and yahoo mail on any computer and still make use of a company domain email address. I have an email address that uses my company domain name, but I use gmail because I can access it from anywhere. I can setup a pop account, forward my “company name” email to gmail and I have mobile access anywhere I go.

Gmail now even has IMAP support. Just a quick blog search for IMAP will tell you how excited everyone is about this new feature. Yahoo mail and Gmail both have great mobile phone interfaces as well for access on your web enabled phone. Some companies do not like to use free email accounts because they think it looks cheap and unprofessional, so if you don’t want to use a free email client, use your own and just setup the account in a way you can access it while you are not in your office.

This is important for you as it is anything else. If you can keep up with your email, even on a limited basis, when you get back to the office you will not have page after page of unread emails to go through. Even if you don’t respond to them while you are out of the office you can at least read them and save a little time when you get back.

When Possible, Use a Canned Response in Reply to Email

This doesn’t have to be a cold, dry, response, and I would say sometimes, any response is better than nothing. Find out what your most common questions are that can’t really be addressed on your FAQ page and make a text document that has the question and canned response. You can make these more personal than you might think. Just write out a thoughtful response to each question as if you were emailing your customer.

Create this document slowly as the questions arrive. After about 6 months of doing this I created a 5-7 page document of reasonable responses, and it would take than the one minute to respond to each email in a thoughtful manner that the customer would appreciate.  Don’t know what questions to put down on a canned response, just make the list as the questions come in.  I usually put down a response or answer to a question once I got that question more than one time.  So on the second email I send out, I just past the response into my canned email file for later use.  It really doesn’t matter if you don’t use it ever again.

Cutting and pasting a response already typed out doesn’t take but a minute to do, and if it ever comes up again you have the answer.  I might add, it isn’t the amount of time that it takes to write the answer, it is the amount of time it takes to think of a thoughful answer to write that takes the most amount of time.  Reduce that by not having to thinkg about the answer again.

Use Filters, Folders, and Labels for Automatic Notices

If you have a high volume of automatic notice emails, be sure you have these going into their own folder, filter, or label. Most of the time you want to receive these emails so you have a record of the transaction, but you don’t need to read them.

Many shopping channel storefronts will email a receipt of each order, a confirmation of each listing, shipping notifications, or any number of other types of emails that are automatically sent.

These emails can be very time consuming to move, delete, or mark as read. Setup a filter to move them automatically and have them marked as read. Don’t waste your time with automatic notifications. You will probably want to setup filters for non-automated emails as well. Filters will save time having to hunt around and will further categorize your responses.  Almost all email programs now have the ability to automatically move messages into specific folders.  Microsoft Outlook has done this for years and even though I don’t use the program any more, it was one of the first things I would setup in Outlook.  You can even have these automatic notices marked as read once they hit the specific folder.

Of course you might ask why receive the email in the first place if you are just going to mark it as read and move it to another file folder, but there are many reasons to do this, much like keeping a receipt from an office supply store for your taxes, you want a record of the transaction you can access at a later time, so automatic filters work great for that purpose.

Use an Auto Responder For Specific Email Addresses

If the questions might be different but the answer is going to be the same, setup an auto responder to answer the email for you. You can setup an alias email address for just about anything, even using Google’s Gmail or Yahoo mail. Most of the time you can use an auto responder for when you go on vacation or will be out of town for more than a few days.

You can also use an auto responder just to say, “thanks, I received your email and I will be sure to read it”. That is responding to your email too. Sometimes that is all it takes to make a customer happy. Just knowing that you received the email and are going to read it, and they know this because they received a response from your company.

Sometimes, time will answer an email. So, use a detailed auto responder to answer a question and by the time you can get to the specifics, an additional response might not be needed. One a recent post titled, How Not to Reply to an Email, Adam talked about an email he received from a fellow blog after leaving a comment. It was most likely an auto responder for a first time commenter, but laked some good detail or links that could have been useful in bringing the visitor back to the site.

When using an auto responder, you don’t have to assume it will never be read, make it good, you only have to type the email once.

Prioritize By Importance and Time to Respond

Realistically, we probably can not respond to every single message we receive. If not, prioritize the emails by importance and time it takes to answer. The second one is very important. You might have an email that is more important, but another you might readily know the answer without any research and it will only take a few seconds to respond. Do those first and get them out of the way.

After you respond to all “quick” emails, then tackle the ones that will take a little time to write or look up. Once you take out those two categories there might be very little email left to answer.

Don’t Spend a Lot of Time Answering a Single Email

I am the worst at this. I will spend an enormous amount of time writing out a response, re-writing, editing, modifying, changing, until it is just perfect, only to never receive a response or it be something they didn’t want to hear in the first place. Be brief and to the point and include enough detail for the customer not to have to email you back again to ask another question.

Being wordy can also have the opposite effect, and can be the same as opening your mouth when silence is a better option. The more you write, the more the customer has to argue or quip with. Most of the time a customer can not argue with something you didn’t say, so keep it as brief as you can without insulting the other person.

Concluding Thoughts

Even though the norm may not be to answer those pesky emails, I think if you do answer the majority of them, your company’s image will improve and your sales revenue may benefit. It may not be possible all the time, but if no one else is, and you do, it will make your company stand out among the large crowd of online sellers and your customers will appreciate your service.

If you think it doesn’t matter to your customers, just think about that the next time you email a company to ask a question (one you really want an answer to) and never hear back from anyone. Does it give you a positive or negative view of that company, or do you just assume they must be a company doing great things and making a lot of money, they certainly don’t need to bother with my email?

What other ways do you have to keep up with your email? Does the issue of answering email matter to your company at all or do you just have better things to do?

Update: I just read a great article title, 10 Reasons I Delete Your Email, by shoemoney, and of course I didn’t really take into account that some people have no email etiquette either. When you come across these situations, a little tact and patience will probably go a long way with your customers.

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Are you running a business? Then you should answer your email. Period. There was a recent article post called, Treat Your Blog like a Business, where Ben made some very good points about how you should run your blog. I want take that a little step farther and state the obvious. You [...]]]>

Are you running a business? Then you should answer your email. Period. There was a recent article post called, Treat Your Blog like a Business, where Ben made some very good points about how you should run your blog. I want take that a little step farther and state the obvious. You should treat your business like a business, and one of those steps is to answer your email, in a professional manner no less.

This will probably not be the most popular post in the world, after all, we all get to much email, and some we just don’t want to mess with. I am speaking about the necessity of answering your email if you are in business, but this includes those who run a small home based business, or someone that sells their services online as well, large or small. If you are online just purely for personal reasons then, answer it, delete, do whatever you want, but I think this applies to personal accounts as well if you want to be successful online. It seems to be common place now to not answer your email. It is the easiest means of communication to ignore, and takes a lot of time.

So if you want to stand out among the others, respond to those emails.

You should try to either answer your emails personally, or if there is just to much to handle, you should delegate it to someone you have hired for administrative duties. Just be sure they reflect your company’s good customer service and aren’t going to add to a problem. Either way, the volume should dictate who answers it, but that doesn’t mean it should go unanswered.

If you receive to much email to answer then it sounds like your business is big enough to have an employee take over these duties, if not, it sounds a lot like an excuse. So, lets look at a few quick reasons why you should and a few steps how to keep up with answering your email.

It is Your Business Reputation

Nothing can turn away business faster than word of mouth or a bad reputation. This could be in print media all the way down to a small forum in your niche market. You want new visitors, right? When a customer first finds your site, they have some initial questions, and most are easily answered but sometimes they want to interact with someone for one reason or another.

When you receive an email from a new customer (or site visitor) like this, they are evaluating your business and how you interact with people. By not answering their email it sends a pretty clear message to them. You are not important enough for me to hit the reply button. They don’t care if you have been out of town, have more pressing (revenue generating) things to do, all they get is this business probably doesn’t care (and you may not). On the other hand, if you make efforts to reply to even the most mundane emails, it will make a very good impression on your customer or visitor. I am not suggesting that you have to answer their email within 5 minutes, time is not the most important thing here. I have responded to an emails from customers days later, after their orders have arrived, because I just couldn’t get to it, and they even appreciate a late response.

Something I always try to remember from the customer side of things. I can always remember who did not reply to my emails, sometimes years later, and it usually is on a negative note. This goes with the smallest business up to the largest corporations, people in general just tend to remember the negative and forget the positive things. Just something to keep in mind when ignoring or deleting that email, or even responding in a negative way. It took some planning and understanding of how to use email effectively, but I have responded to just about every email in the past 5-10 years and when someone sends me an email saying “you never responded to me”, I generally have a good answer to that question, a copy of my response.

It Can Increase Your Sales Revenue

This flows right down from the first point. Once you have established a rapport with your customer they may actually want to buy something from you. Want to loose a sale or a repeat customer fast? Don’t answer their email. This is especially true on eBay.

eBay has an easy way for potential bidders to contact you, so you will tend to get overwhelmed with email about trite things that don’t really matter, or that the customer should be able to figure out on their own. Well, if they could figure it out on their own they probably wouldn’t have shot off that email to you. I have found that there is a direct correlation on eBay to bidding and responding to emails. I can attest, yes, most emails are stupid questions, and yes, I have come to realize there ARE stupid questions. This fact doesn’t really make a difference to the customer. If you respond to their email, they are much more likely to bid on your auction.

If you don’t answer their question before they actually buy the item from you, from the customers point of view, what are you likely to do when they have a problem with the product or service after they have spent their money.

Responding Can Avert Problems

One of the fastest ways to solve a problem, or fix a potential one, is to respond to customer questions. Some customers or visitors are not as dumb as you may think. They may have found a problem with your product or service that you did not know about.

This works for the smallest to the largest companies. My wife is a pattern designer and she has received emails asking about a particular area of the pattern, and sometimes there is an error in the pattern and she can change it before it becomes a bigger problem. This works on your eCommerce platform. Take Amazon for example. A book store may have emails come in that ask about if this book is a certain edition, publication year or whatever. Answering the email will provide the customer with enough information about the product so they know whether to buy or not to buy it, but you don’t want them to just buy it just to have them return it a week later?

I have emailed several companies about bugs in their software. Some have returned their emails thanking me for the information and others I have received no response. I still use the software from that particular vendor.

It Builds Your Networking

Something to always keep in mind when deciding whether to ignore an email or reply to an email. You may never know who you are actually corresponding with. It may actually be someone that can help or improve your business, or just wants to give you something. It is not always that stupid customer that should know you have an FAQ page posted with all these dumb questions. An email from a business exec can look the same as an email from Joe Bob who types in all CAPS because he just bought his first computer last week and doesn’t know his mouse from his dog, you just don’t know who is on the other side of the screen much of the time.

Ignoring emails will certainly get you results, just not much. There are many other ways to communicate and network with people on the net other than email, but email is a personal response that tells your recipient that they are important enough to respond to. Sometimes time can be the most precious gift ever given. Spend a few minutes to respond to that person and you never know where the relationship might take you. It has given me more than a few freelance jobs in my day.

A Few Recent Examples

First, I had another consultant ask me for advise that would help him with his clients. I responded to his email with some basic information and he gave no response. About two weeks later he did email me and asked me a more in depth question and I took about two hours of my busy day to write out a specific how to he could use for his clients.

Weeks went by and I receive no response. I emailed him again and just asked him if that was helpful for his clients. He didn’t respond. I am not likely to respond with ANY more information to “help” anyone over there. All that was needed was a very quick reply saying “I got it, it worked”. I don’t need a pat on the back, just some communication to know my 2 hours wasn’t wasted. A second example would be when I contacted a very small (one person) online business, but one that reached a large audience. I had something from my business I wanted to give him. That’s it. I didn’t want anything from him, I didn’t ask for anything other than an address to which I could ship an item I thought he would want.

I sent two emails before I received a response, but I had already decided to give it to someone else until I received the email. Once I got the email with the address I was able to ship the item off to the business. We can all give example after example, but when someone takes the time to send an email the least you can do is respond to it, and you might be surprised who is on the other end or what they can do for your business.

Some Concluding Thoughts

If you want to be successful online, answer your email. Yes, email can be one of the biggest headaches of the business day, and many business now just do not respond to email, so be one that does and stand out. I have read so many company profiles (and about me blog pages) that say they get to much email to respond to each one. This may be the case, but think about what that says about your company.

I effectively answered my emails to all my customers for years by doing some basic steps I will outline in my next post called, How to Effectively Answer All Your Emails, that explain how to prioritize and plan for those emails, and also as important, how to reduce the number of emails you receive. Reducing the number is as effective and keeps you from having to live in your inbox. I will say that you can take this to absurdity, and that is not the point of course. There are some emails I don’t respond to like spam, fraud, or phishing emails, and the occasional badgering customer that we have taken all business to its utmost conclusion, and one other… when you don’t respond to my email.

What about your company? Do you respond to your emails or ignore them until they go away? What positive effects can you show when you answer those questions? Now I better go answer all those emails I have been ignoring for days now, the inbox runeth over.

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The information received by our company was in a newsletter form and shown below in the form it [...]]]> Constant Contact just announced that they will be making their Initial Public Offering under the (NASDAQ:GM) symbol CTCT. The IPO will have almost 7 million shares and the press release is shown below.

The information received by our company was in a newsletter form and shown below in the form it was received. This is very interesting news and will certainly give Constant Contact some available capital to further enhance their services.

I have used Constant Contact for many years off and on and they always seem to be the leading company in online marketing, a market which is harder and harder to break into as the spamming rules and laws get tougher and tougher. On of the companies I work with has been in business quite a while and although they have all legitimate business practices and good customer base, being seen as a spammer these days can be your worst enemy. Constant Contact is very zealous in this area and is probably a good reason for their success.

Constant Contact Prices Initial Public Offering

WALTHAM, MA – October 2, 2007 – Constant Contact^®, Inc (NasdaqGM: CTCT) today announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 6,700,000 shares of its common stock at $16.00 per share (before underwriting discounts and commissions).

The 6,700,000 shares consist of 5,829,839 being sold by the Company and 870,161 being sold by certain stockholders of the Company. The shares are scheduled to begin trading on the NASDAQ Global Market on October 3, 2007 under the trading symbol “CTCT.” The Company will not receive any of the proceeds from the sale of common stock held by the selling stockholders. The Company and the selling stockholders have granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,005,000 shares at the initial public offering price to cover over-allotments, if any.

CIBC World Markets and Thomas Weisel Partners acted as joint book-runners for the offering, and William Blair & Company, Cowen and Company, and Needham & Company were co-managers.

A copy of the final prospectus related to this offering may be obtained from CIBC World Markets Corp., Attn: USE Prospectus Department, 425 Lexington Ave, 5th floor, New York, New York 10017, (866) 895-5637, useprospectus@us.cibc.com or from Thomas Weisel Partners LLC, Attn: Prospectus Department, One Montgomery Street, Suite 3700, San Francisco, California 94104, (415) 364-2720.

A registration statement relating to these securities was declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 2, 2007. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities, in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

About Constant Contact, Inc.

Constant Contact is the leading provider of on-demand email marketing solutions for small businesses, nonprofits, and associations.

Constant Contact is a registered trademark and the Constant Contact Logo is a trademark of Constant Contact, Inc. All other company names may be trademarks or service marks of their respective owners

Media Contact:

Kevin Mullins

kmullins@constantcontact.com

Investor Contact:

Garo Toomajanian

ir@constantcontact.com

This is the direct mailing from Constant Contact themselves:

We have some exciting news to share with you. Yesterday, October 2, Constant Contact® became a public company, and we expect our shares to begin trading today on the NASDAQ Global Market under the symbol “CTCT”.

Please view the press release we issued.

This is an important milestone for Constant Contact, and we owe all of our success to you, our customers. Having grown from zero to 130,000 customers, and from only a few employees to more than 300, the past nine years have been an incredible journey for all of us. During this time, you’ve taught us what it takes to truly serve small businesses and organizations, and we look forward to continuing our partnership and helping you succeed.

As always, we’ll be there to support you as you have supported us, every step of the way. That’s our commitment to you.

Thank you for being a Constant Contact customer.

All the best,

Gail Goodman, CEO

I will post some more information here as soon as I find it. If if haven’t tried Constant Contact yet for your internet marketing it is worth a try and coming up soon I will post more information on the usefulness of their services.

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