MARKNADSFÖRING
6 Steps for Powerful Business Email Communication
While modern business platforms such as Slack, MS Teams, and chat apps such as Viber and Whatsapp are useful, email remains the primary business communication method.
While you can replace a part of internal communication with Slack, collaborating with clients or partners who are not a part of your workplace will still go through email.
Our inboxes are flooded with newsletters, email promotions, offers, memos, and updates that aren’t too important. Even worse, emails are often sent to people who don’t need to see them due to CC misuse, which creates an unnecessary energy drain across the whole organization.
While quick fixes such as adding a professional email signature can help you stand out instantly, if you really want to transform your business communication, you will need to do more. Our 6 steps for powerful email communication will ensure all your emails count and that you never end up in the spam folder or ignored.
Step #1: Ask yourself, “Do I need to send this email to this person?”
“Our policy is to never use emails for intra-team communication Using Slack speeds up the working process, as we have everything pre-set, with each team using their own channel” – Armand Ciuleanu – CEO/Founder at RebelDot
If you can take only one tip from this whole article, this should be it:
Before sending anything, ask yourself is emailing the best way to communicate right now and are you sending the email to the right person.
Answering the first part of the question can save you an enormous amount of time. First, if you want to type an email to your coworker, maybe it’s a better option to ask them if they are around or to send them a Slack message. Both ways will get you an answer faster.
If it’s not a person from your organization, a phone call might be a better option than emailing. That way, you will get a response in a matter of minutes, instead of waiting for hours or days. Even if it’s not urgent, if you can solve a problem in five minutes, there’s no reason for it to end up on your to-do list.
Answering the second part of the question will make you think about who you are sending the email to. While the primary recipient is necessary, don’t automatically put everyone else in CC. Even if you are unsure, you can always forward the whole communication to the right person later, which is a much better option than starting a spam chain for no reason.
Here are some situations when emailing is a good option:
- You need a written record of the whole correspondence with the person
- You are not sending time-sensitive information
- You have to contact or notify several people at the same time
- You have to share important files
Step #2: Think through your subject lines
Before anyone reads the body of your email, they are faced with its subject line. While subject lines are much more important in sales and cold pitching than business correspondence, they still require your attention.
If possible, the subject line should communicate the main point of the email and should never be generic. For example, “a short note” “a quick memo” are not very informative. Descriptive subject lines will make your emails much easier to find later, in case the recipient forgets to label it or mark it with a star.
Therefore, if you want to notify your coworkers about an upcoming important meeting, then you should write:
“Important: sales team Zoom meeting, Thu, 26th, 2 PM.”
The body should contain the description and the topic of the meeting so people can prepare, and an invitation link – but the subject line tells them all they need to know.
One more subject line tip: don’t abuse the word “important” or the exclamation point in your email client. While there are important things, if you mark everything as important and urgent, even if it’s not, people will stop paying attention, which will affect your credibility.
Step #3: Highlight the reason why you are sending the email first
In most cases, the most important thing your email contains should be mentioned in the subject line. But, even if that is the case, after an appropriate greeting, state it again.
Nonetheless, the most important part of the email should always be at the top. That will not only make it hard to miss, but it will also make it more likely for people to read the rest of the email if it grabs their attention.
If it’s something super important such as a meeting date, a security update, or a change in shift schedule, use bold text or write in UPPER CASE letters. But, use these formatting tools in moderation, or else they will have no effect.
Also, try to keep the highlighted information in up to two sentences. The goal is to make people read the highlighted text – if they do only that, the whole email achieves its purpose. That’s why it shouldn’t be buried near the bottom but at the beginning of your email.
Step #4: Keep it short and easy to read
Our Step #1 will cull a good portion of unnecessary emails, which is good. Now, if you have to send an email, make sure it only contains information it has to and make it as easy to read as possible.
A good rule of thumb is always to remember that you are sending business emails. In business, time is money, and you don’t want to waste the time of your colleagues, partners, or clients.
But, at the same time, you are communicating with real people, and the way you communicate can make a huge difference. Here’s how to make your emails more impactful:
- Use bullet points and numbered lists – these catch readers’ attention and make it easy to absorb the information visually.
- Write short sentences in simple terms – while this one is sometimes hard to do in business communication, simplifying your language and sentences will make your emails more pleasant to read. Don’t use complicated terminology if you don’t have to; write as you usually speak.
- Use proper spacing – writing short paragraphs will make your emails easy to skim. Also, if possible, widen out your line spacing, or put an extra empty row between two paragraphs. This will give readers “breathing room” and make your email messages more pleasant to read.
- Use visuals where appropriate – using images is another good way to break the text, but you can also use them to replace the text. For example, instead of sending complex explanations, a simple screenshot can do the trick. Tools such as Lightshot will help you create actionable screenshots in minutes, saving you a lot of time you would waste on walking recipients through technical information.
Step #5: Think twice before clicking “reply” or “reply all”
While using “CC” too often is very common, the same goes for using “reply” and “reply all” buttons the wrong way.
In case you don’t know the difference – the “reply” button will mean you will send a reply only to the sender; “reply all” will send your reply to everyone who is marked in the “CC” section as well.
Even though there are many people in the CC field that doesn’t mean you should automatically click “reply all.” Whether or not you should share your answer with everyone, or just with the sender will depend on the situation, and you will have to use your best judgment. But, if your response has something to do with all other people in CC, or you have a question or a remark that might interest them, hit “reply all.”
On the other hand, if you only need to send the reply to the sender, “reply” is the only right choice.
And if you need to communicate only with certain individuals that are in the CC field, no worries – click “reply all”, but delete people who are not needed from the CC field before sending the email.
Step #6: Avoid meaningless and washed up phrases
“The nature of our business requires consistent communication with government officials and public record keepers who never have time and are flooded with emails. Therefore, we keep things short, and to the point, making sure our requests are easy to notice and understand.” – Lucie Chavez, CMO of Radaris.
Unless you work in a strictly formal environment, for example, a court, using tight phrases such as “to whom it may concern” should never be a part of email communication.
While it’s not that rigid, phrases such as “greetings” are also becoming a thing of the past. Today, even “Dear Sir/Madam” sounds inappropriate in email business communication.
If you work in a less formal, modern environment, using simple “hi” or “hello” to start your email is perfect. The same goes for the end of an email. If “cheers” is too informal for you, “thanks,” “best,” or “regards” are much better than “with best regards.”
Also, try not to use the same washed-up phrases as everyone else. It’s one thing to be polite, but writing “I hope you had a great weekend!” every single Monday may be perceived as insincere. Try something a bit more authentic.
Business emails should be, first and foremost, practical. That means they should contain only the necessary information that is actionable above all else – dates, screenshots, instructions, memos, and similar. If you stick to that rule, your business email communication will always be on a high level.
Avslutar
Vår 6 steps for powerful business email communication will not only make your emails more impactful but will also save time – not only yours but across your whole organization.
Keeping your emails short, subject lines clear, using CC and “reply all” the right way, and only sending fluff-free emails with clear intent will make you an email communication rockstar.
Even if you are not in a position to change the way your organization operates, if you start writing terrific emails, you will lead by example, and influence the email culture within your company. Before you know it, key people will notice, which will certainly positively affect your business reputation.
Källlänk
MARKNADSFÖRING
Google Bard vs. the New Bing
The author’s views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
This week I’ve been fortunate enough to get access to both Google Bard and the New Bing, so a day later, I’m here to share my first impressions.
What is the new Bing?
“The new Bing” is the product of Microsoft’s unholy alliance with OpenAI, makers of the now infamous ChatGPT. This development promises to have seismic effects on the search ecosystem, with Microsoft’s CEO saying they’re happy to accept “demonetization” of search in their pursuit of market share, and Google extremely concerned about the threat ChatGPT technology poses as an alternative to their core search business.
Of course, by now we’ve all also seen various viral posts and tweets showing just how dangerous it can be to use chat AI as a search engine, but that’s a topic for another day. For now, the point is that Bing is making moves.
When I perform a search on “old bing” now, I can see this box inviting me to try the new one. You’ll notice a key detail here: it’s only available in Microsoft Edge. Yikes. Big Microsoft Energy. Fortunately for you, the reader, I have dusted off everyone’s fourth-favorite browser so you don’t have to.
Performing the same search in the new Bing, I can see identical organic results, but rather different features:
The “mustelid masters” box above the organic results is new, and contains AI-generated text with a voice-to-speech capability. It’s a six-part story, with sometimes surprising accompanying imagery:
You can see here that a picture of wrestling has been sourced to accompany the text about badgers wrestling. These AI-generated boxes don’t appear for most queries — only clear and uncontroversial informational intents.
The phrase “Mustelid masters” itself seems to be original to this box.
Lastly, one of the tabs in the story cites the Wisconsin Badgers, and a page which is entirely unrelated to the content at hand, so perhaps Bing is also citing its sources for disambiguation here?
You’ll notice the addition of an “Open Website” button next to the top result on the SERP — perhaps a way of compensating a little for loss of organic click through rate?
The “chat” tab is also present on old Bing, but just shows you a message telling you to go to Microsoft Edge.
The phrase “conversational search” here is interesting, given this was a phrase Google introduced in 2013.
If we do use Microsoft Edge, we see a chatbot interface in this tab, but with some nice additions. Switching over to this from a regular search result pre-loads my previous query from organic search:
There’s a bunch of different modes available at the top, and also citations in the search results — both welcome improvements over the likes of ChatGPT.
Now, how about Bard?
What is Google Bard?
Well, not very self-confident, for one. But that’s probably a good thing.
Bard is also, right now, not anywhere near as integrated with search. In their announcement on February 6th, Google teased Bard in a way that made it look very much like a SERP feature, similar to Bing:
However, the version we have to play with now is more of a dedicated chatbot interface.
It was probably already the case that Google was pushed to move far sooner than they hoped with this technology, and of course they have much more to lose from messing with organic search than Bing does. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see the slower and more cautious approach.
Now, it probably should be noted that chatbots are not really designed for me to just enter a one word keyword like “badgers”, like I might do in organic search. But, like Bing’s chat tab, I get something resembling an informational result. So, let’s compare side by side.
Bard vs. new Bing, side-by-side
Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.
The most obvious difference, at least to an SEO’s eye, is the presence of citations in the Bing result. Not knowing where source information comes from is one of the biggest challenges for users when dealing with this kind of technology, so that’s a huge differentiator.
Bard does claim to include citations. My colleague Mike was able to trigger them, and captured it in this clip. It’s definitely far, far less ubiquitous than on Bing.
That said, I like that the framing of Google’s solution — with multiple draft answers presented and “enter a prompt here” — which makes it clearer I’m dealing with something that is not a source of unassailable truth.
I was also intrigued by the localization of Bing’s result. It mentions the UK in its response, which is where I’m searching from, and shows UK websites in the citations. So I asked them both a follow-up question about my location:
Bing repeats itself, but Bard just seems to assume I’m in the US. Unfortunate.
Slightly commercial query
Many SEOs will be more interested in how technology like this might fit into their marketing funnel. Let’s try a classic top-of-funnel query:
Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.
There isn’t really an objective answer here, but both results are broadly sensible. That said, the Bing answer is both a narrower list and far richer.
Interestingly, neither result seems deterministic.
Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.
Bing can produce different answers to the same question in different windows, and so can Google.
Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.
This may be a contentious point when SEOs start optimizing for these answers, and want to measure their results. Of course, regular organic rankings can vary massively between locales and even days of the week, but generally speaking, if you search twice from the same computer (in private browsing windows etc) you’ll get the same results. Not so here.
Conspiracy theories
Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.
Neither solution fell for some obvious conspiracy theory bait, which is encouraging to see. I actually don’t mind at all Google’s more cautious “I can’t assist with that” here. I wasn’t able to provoke a similar reaction out of Bing for any query, but I also wasn’t able to provoke it to say anything abhorrent – I’m sure others will, though.
What next for SEOs?
For both platforms there are major questions before SEOs can really engage and consider them an important part of their work.
For Bing, will this have adoption? Most SEOs have not made the habit of optimizing for Bing in recent years, but there is redan talar om ökad Bing marknadsandel.
För Bard, hur, om alls, kommer detta att integreras i sökningen? Den nuvarande plattformen är tydligt markerad som ett experiment och är mer som ChatGPT än den är som de mock-ups som Google visade oss i februari. Eller kommer användarna att uppmuntras att använda det som sin egen sak?
För båda plattformarna finns det stora frågor om hur SEO:er kan gå tillväga för att optimera för att få sina kunder att nämna, och faktiskt positivt omnämnda i resultat – det finns massor av otrevliga möjligheter här, och Wikipedia är förmodligen den mest uppenbara. En gång nämnt, hur mäter man detta? När jag klickade mig vidare till min egen sida från Bings chattflik, såg den bara ut som all annan organisk Bing-trafik. Rankspårning är också ett intressant problem, och du kan vara säker på att Moz och STAT kommer att publicera inlägg i framtiden om hur vi hanterar dessa funktioner – håll koll på det här utrymmet!
MARKNADSFÖRING
What Is AI Analytics?
Vår Marknadstrender 2023-rapport fann att datadrivna marknadsförare kommer att vinna 2023. Det är vettigt, men dataanalys kan vara utmanande och tidskrävande för många företag.
MARKNADSFÖRING
Scaling agile with the Agile Marketing Navigator framework
Många tror att att skala agilt innebär att ta det från ett lag till många. Även om det är en del av det, handlar smidighet i skala mer om kulturomvandling. Alla i marknadsorganisationen behöver förvandlas till ett agilt sätt att tänka och agera.
Den praxis vi har etablerat i Agil marknadsföringsnavigator hjälpa till att driva kulturförändring och rätt beteenden för agility. Idag kommer vi att fokusera på cykeltid, avfallsborttagning och rollerna som intressenter och praktikledare som kan hjälpa dig att ta agil marknadsföring till nästa nivå.
Ta bort avfall genom att se över gamla arbetssätt
När det kommer till avfallsborttagning kan ett team göra ändringar om de kan arbeta självständigt. Men mer betydande ansträngningar krävs för att göra slagkraftiga förändringar i större organisationer där system och processer når långt utanför teamet.
Låt oss säga att flera agila team har identifierat att det krävs för många sign-offs för att få arbetet levererat snabbt och med agilitet. Nu vet du att detta är ett systemproblem i marknadsföringen som kräver mer än en plåsterreparation.
Det första steget är att mäta problemets inverkan på den övergripande marknadsföringsleveransen. Det är bäst att göra detta i samarbete och få hjälp från representanter för flera team och nivåer i företaget. Du kan dela upp objekt efter de typer som verkar mest problematiska.
Låt oss säga att alla säger att processen för att lansera en målsida på din webbplats är väldigt långsam och har flest sign-offs. Ta klisterlappar och kartlägg alla steg i processen, med fokus på varje sign-off. Detta gör att du kan kvantifiera en baslinje för hur många steg som är i din process och hur lång tid det tar idag.
Du kommer sedan att titta på det totala antalet genomsnittliga dagar det tar att leverera målsidan i hela organisationen. I det här exemplet säger vi att det tar i genomsnitt 45 arbetsdagar att lansera en målsida från början till slut.
Alla borde då diskutera vad som verkar vara en mer rimlig tidsram. Denna grupp bestämmer sig för att sträva efter 30 dagar. Nu måste de avslöja var de kan få tillbaka dessa 15 dagar, varav de flesta är bundna i godkännanden och väntetid.
Eftersom det här problemet begränsar alla marknadsförare måste ledare kunna ta steget och vara villiga att radikalt stärka förändringen från gamla sätt att arbeta. De kommer att behöva tillåta denna förändring att ske och stärka Lean-tänkande. Detta innebär ofta att ge upp lite säkerhet eller säkerhet i utbyte mot snabbhet. Och ja, misstag kan hända. Men det är här att lita på att människor kommer att lära av dem och den övergripande förändringen kommer att uppväga risken.
Det är denna typ av kulturförändring som kommer att leda till verklig smidighet. Ledare: Du kan inte bara lämna över agil marknadsföring till ditt team och gå därifrån. Det är absolut nödvändigt att du ger teamen möjlighet att identifiera problemen samtidigt som du aktivt banar väg för dem att implementera nya sätt att arbeta.
Leda praktikgemenskaper
När du mognar i din agila praktik och bildar team kring affärsbehov, bryter du dig från traditionellt byggda avdelningar kring discipliner. Men eftersom du involverar fler och fler team i agil marknadsföring kommer det att vara riktigt viktigt att dessa discipliner fortfarande har starkt ledarskap och bästa praxis.
En Design Community of Practice är ett bra exempel. Praktikledaren måste arbeta med alla designers i alla agila team för att säkerställa varumärkeskvalitet och tillväxt inom området.
En praktikledare i vårt ramverk är vanligtvis en avdelningschef, men deras roll förändras med agil marknadsföring. De tilldelar eller hanterar inte längre arbete, men de måste fortfarande arbeta för att säkerställa att alla på fältet kan bli framgångsrika med färdigheter, verktyg, kunskapsdelning och praxisstandarder.
Om du arbetar i agilt idag och har upptäckt att de funktionella rollerna minskar, börja omedelbart driva en Community of Practice, och du kommer att upptäcka att du kan lyckas med ett leveransteam som har flera färdigheter, såväl som i en gemenskap där delade kompetenser maximeras.
När du växer inom agil marknadsföring, kom ihåg att det inte bara är en check-the-box-process eller ramverk. Riktigt bra agil marknadsföring kräver stora ledare som är investerade i sann transformation.
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