Ever open your inbox to see pages and pages of email then start randomly choosing which to look at? Look closely each day and I will bet there is a great percentage of email that perhaps you know who the sender is, BUT THE DETAILS OF THE COMMUNICATION DO NOT MATCH THE SUBJECT. The time it takes for you just to figure out what people are talking about inadvertently adds stress to one’s day.

I get a valid 25 to 50 emails by morning, all valid since many of my marketing customers are sending evening or very early communications. I had specifically 33 today and within less than 1 minute I knew what 24 were about. 72% is not bad. So, I quickly organized them in about 5 minutes to organize my responses and then looked at the remaining 9. Took me much longer since I had to read through the emails to get to the point. Most of these were older emails that my clients replied to in order to start another conversation.

What did I do with these messy emails?
1) I replied, changed the subject header, and sent it off with the appropriate details, then
2) I sent a separate email asking them to just be aware of this and respectfully request to create new email subjects going forward. I also suggested they do the same with their main contacts so they look to be efficient not only with me, but with another handful of people they deal with. Best way to see how I benefit is by sharing this with my clients.  There are some who are hopelessly going to stay with old habits and are not receptive to change, but all you need is a percentage of your clients to change and that efficiency benefits you (and them).

Let me use one great example how this benefits you.  If an email comes in, and the subject is exactly what it means, then it is so much easier to drag the item into your calendar.  Making something easier, once a day, everyday, will give you an extra few minutes.  Multiply that by the year and you gain days.

I work with so many website companies and individual programmers. More than I care to count. And I help re-establish broken relationships between contractors and their programmers too. So much begins with effective communications. In fact, this literally was the first issue I documented as part of a short series of ways to learn how to better communicate with your website programmer. It works not only for working with technical folk, but with anyone else too.  The video below targets the topic as it relates to working with programmers.

But you can do the same when trying to stand out with potential customers.  Keep changing the subjects as you go back and forth, and the clients will feel you are giving them a more personalized relationship.