I want you all to go grab your favourite marketing person and make them read this post. You know the ones I am talking about. The one that doesn’t understand why they have to take the 3600dpi 8GB PDF that could be blown up to the size of the Empire State Building without looking grainy, and reduce it for sending over email to a customer. The one who came in early last week to send an email blast to a 1000 person customer list that they bought from a guy they know, which resulted in your corporate network being placed on every RDNS blacklist on the planet. The one who doesn’t understand why when he sends an email, the customer doesn’t have it open to read before he lets goes of the mouse. The one whose laptop you secretly want to replace with an Etch-a-Sketch.

You know the one I am talking about… the one who just doesn’t “get” what you keep trying to tell him. I want you to share this blog post with him…maybe even forward it to him </wink>. This blog post is a list of seven things that non-technical folks should NOT do in email, unless of course, the objective is to lose customers and infuriate people.

1. Create form letters without testing them
   Here’s an example of something I got in my email today:
   
   And here’s the first thing I zoomed in on and clicked.
   
   If you are going to send out bulk email, either address it to “valued customer” so we’re at least honest about how impersonal it is, or test your program on your own personal account and a few of your cow-orkers before you fill your customers’ inboxes with junk.
2. Email an attachment that should have been the body of the email
   How many times have you gotten an email with an attachment and had to open the attachment to find that it either could have been incorporated in the body of the message, or left on a webserver and the email should have just included the link? That just wastes everyone’s time, and bandwidth, and also raises the chance your message will be blocked before the user even sees it.
3. Use a fixed width format that cannot be viewed on a mobile device
   If I have to scroll back and forth or pinch and zoom to read your message, I’ll probably just delete it unless it was something I specifically asked for. When you are trying to get your message out, make sure it can be received on any of the myriad devices your (potential) customers might use; full PC mail client, smartphone, e-reader, tablet, etc.
4. Use micro-fonts
   The saying is that 12 is the new 10. As devices get smaller, and as folks’ eyes get worse from staring at screens all day, one very bad thing you can do to people is make them squint to read your message. Yes, of course they can zoom in; but they could have also gone to your website instead of reading your email. Any extra effort or inconvenience is that much more reason for someone to delete you message unread.
5. Send read-receipt requested email
   If you want to know for a fact I got something, deliver it in person. Anything else is invasive and rude. When people do that to me internally, I make it a point to go over to their office and read the message out loud to them from my phone, asking for help with the big words. When sales people do it on unsolicited messages, I add them to the junk senders list.
6. Send an email to a large list of people where the only thing they have in common is that they’re in your address book or on your list
   It’s called BCC, and if you aren’t using it, you’re doing a huge disservice to your customers by exposing their information to people they’d just as soon not have their contact details. Hey admins? Why aren’t you limiting recipients per message to prevent the “mistakes” from happening?
7. Do not include your phone number in your email
   If you don’t want to take a customer call, you can always let it go into voice mail, but if you actually got our attention, and maybe we want to talk to you about what you’re selling, don’t make us hunt for your telephone number!

Readers, this is a chance for you to sound off about the things people do in email that drive you up a wall. Leave a comment (you don’t even have to register) and share your horror stories, pet peeves, or the worst affronts you’ve personally witnessed. Hello Internet, I’m listening.