Hello and Happy Sandwich Day and Stress Awareness Day! A nice sandwich usually relieves my stress. I also like calling it a sammich. I don’t why, it’s just fun to say. Sammich, sammich, sammich…
NEWS AND NOTES!
The audio book I narrated, “Winning Mars”, is now on sale! Click here to check it out.
The comic booked I co-wrote, “Anne Manx: Lives of the Cat” is now on sale on Amazon Kindle. My first professional writing credit, whoo hoo!
Like you, I get email blasts/newsletters every month from clients, potential clients, fellow voice talents, etc. Also like you, I take a quick look, occasionally write back, and then delete them. Last week I got two emails of particular interest. Not because of their content, but because of their mistakes. Allow me to explain…
The first email (a newsletter) was from a potential client. The mistake was that all the links in the email led to the same page of their website that had nothing to do with the content of the newsletter. I know this because I was really interested in the subject and I wanted to learn more. I wrote the guy and told him about the hyperlink boo-boo. He apologized and said he would take care of it. Within the hour he sent out another email blast apologizing for the error and enclosed the correct link. No big deal. I’ve messed up links in my newsletters before and these things happen.
The second email (a solicitation) was from an “online manager” who sent me a LinkedIn invite just a few days before. All of the recipients were cc’ed, not bcc’d. FYI when you BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) email recipients, nobody know who else you sent the email to. When you CC (Carbon Copy) the recipients, everyone knows who else you sent the email to. It is considered very bad form to do this for a number of reasons, the most egregious of which is that now everyone has everyone else’s email address the recipients can do who-knows-what with them.
Here were two of the replies to this email:
“Gee – let me hire a person for my online business management that can’t even remember to blind copy their prospects in an email. Sounds good to me!”
“This should read: Signs that xxxxxxx xxxxxx is NOT ready for an online manager business. I do have a question given that the majority of the people in this email is from the xxxx or xxxxx Industry I’m sure like me they are curious as to HOW you received our email address. I would safely assume you purchased our e-mail address from a xxxxx company or event we’ve attended in the past. I would like to know so I can report and add them to the FTC list or I can simply file a complaint against you.”
Yikes. This was how she handled it:
“You may have recently received an email blast from me in regards to my business outreach efforts. Please know that your email address was curated from my first level connections (which require mutual acceptance) on Linkedin via contact export to my email marketing platform. In an effort to experiment with the ever changing social media engagement technology available through platforms such as Linkedin, I sent out a single email broadcast to many of my new contacts, none of which were subscribed to any auto-responder type list. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. As I am sure you are aware, if you do not wish to be a part of that email thread, simply delete it.”
Double yikes. Notice how the vigorous defense is at the beginning of the email and the brief apology is near the end? Oh, and being a LinkedIn connection does not imply permission to add my email address to your non-Linked In mailing list.
TIP OF THE WEEK: If there is one thing I’ve learned as an adult, it’s that if you make a mistake, own it. Acknowledge it, apologize, fix it, and move on. Just eat it and smile. You’ll be respected for it!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
STUFF!: I was thinking about sending the lady in question an email to give her some insight about the situation and some advice. Do you think it’s worth the effort?
From Tom Dheere’s apartment, this is Tom Dheere: GKN News…