Whatever the purpose of your email, whether it’s promotional, customer service or just an automated email response – try to include a salutation followed by a few lines of personal, conversational text.
Why?
Because there is tremendous power in connecting with your reader on a personal level. Opening with a personal voice signals that the email comes not just from a corporation, but from an individual person.
When you do this well, each email you send slowly builds and reinforces a one-to-one relationship with the reader.
That personal relationship, however slight, will help get your emails opened each time you send one. And if your voice becomes associated with a sense of trust, it will also help in raising your response rates.
I hear endless excuses as to why it just “wouldn’t work” for such and such a company or situation. Well, I don’t buy that. I think you can insert a genuine, personal voice into any kind of communication, and any kind of email.
If you choose not to, you are ignoring one of the greatest strengths of email as a communications medium.
You have only to look through your emails from friends, family and even colleagues to see how personal and conversational email can be.
Ignore that opportunity, and you can be sure that your readers will quickly associate your emails with all the other corporate, impersonal and consequently less interesting email they receive.
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