I’m not sure what to do with this. Unsubscribing is the easy next step, but then what? I sure don’t feel vindicated just by unsubscribing and saying, “I never signed up to begin with” as my reason for leaving. So, to begin, I’m going to write this to all of you, and maybe, you can forward the following to whoever adds you without your request to their email list:

Please Remove Me From Your Email Newsletter

Hello!

You evidently mistook access for acceptance. I seem to be subscribed to your email newsletter, and I’m not interested. Now, I realize there’s a click-to-unsubscribe option, but I wanted a moment of your time, seeing as you ate up some of mine by making me go through the process of unsubscribing myself from your mailing list.

I can tell you’re eager to grow your business. It’s clear that you want incredibly smart and engaging people like me to participate in your world. Here’s a hint: blindly adding me to your email list won’t really win you many fans in that regard.

In fact, you know who you get when you use that method? Lazy people who haven’t bothered hitting unsubscribe yet. And if they’re too lazy to opt out (or even report you as spam), how motivated will they be to buy your product or service? Seems like a waste of your database space to me.

So, I’m going to unsubscribe now, and I’m going to wish you the best with your business. You clearly need it, if you think blindly adding me to your lists will ensure your future success.

Thanks and with appreciation,

_____________.

There You Have It

Share that all you want. Copy it, paste it, reblog it. Whatever. Just let’s get people to stop doing this. Okay?

And if YOU are doing it? Stop. Today. Please? Because I’m getting itchy to out you.

Photo credit Pink Sherbet Photography

My Email Contact Form

So, I went to Google Docs and started a new form. File>New>Form. I put in the categories that you see when you see my contact form. Then, I save the form with a template. Finally, I wrote a new WordPress page called “contact” and embedded the form into it (copy/paste level of difficulty).

On the back end, I get a spreadsheet. The sheet has the following categories from left to right:

Timestamp
Name
Email
I’m Contacting Chris Because
Phone
Brief description of what to tell chris
Anything else
Chris’s Notes
Diane’s Notes (my assistant)

I open this spreadsheet, and everything you send on the form shows up there. I then scroll through each request, and either give Diane instructions on what to do next, or I reply myself, depending on what is requested. When I’m done with things, Diane moves the handled requests to an old spreadsheet for storage.

The #1 contact type that I ignore: press releases. Why? Because they’re so rarely about my community.

The #1 contact type that I answer: speaking requests and other consulting needs.

In between, I answer as many personal emails as I can, and if I can’t get right back, I ask Diane to at least contact the person and tell them that I saw the message and that I appreciate the support.

Now that’s how I handle what I’m getting in. Let’s talk about some more tips for mail you send out.

Sending Email That Gets Answered

I got a lot of good feedback on what to do and what not to do with emails. Mixed into that are things I didn’t cover well the first time. Oh, and I’ve covered this before in great detail.

Subject lines matter. In an earlier post, I recommended these as starter advice:

• DECISION NEEDED: Picking the corporate logo today
• SCHEDULING: Check Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday
• PROMOTION HELP: Looking for some blog and Twitter love
• [chrisbrogan.com] seems offline. You might want to check.
• MICROSOFT DEAL: Should we take it? (from JYang@yahoo.com)

Of course, you can pick whichever way seems to make sense to you, but do you see how those pop out at you? The ALL-CAPS is maybe extreme, but maybe not.

More on brevity. It’s amazing how effective I am at answering emails that are spit out in short lists. I got this from Jon Swanson, who sends little list emails to me now and again. Here’s what I mean:

Chris,

1. We have you arriving at 10:40AM. A driver will be there with your name on a placard. His name is… His cell is…
2. Do you want to go back to the hotel or right to the event?
3. We don’t have your presentation up front. Will you be using your laptop, or can we load your preso onto the show computer?
4. We have your check. Should we give it to you before or after you speak?

——–

I get about 3 or 4 emails like this every day. I answer them right away. Think about it: plow through your 2000 word missive or respond to these rapid-fire questions? I’ll take B any day.

Are there times when you need more? Yes. At those times, I just reply and ask for more. MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, this is enough.

Bring every email closer to DONE. Try to make every email definitive. If you’re planning a meeting, put out three or four days and dates. For the most part, emails should exist to inform, move ideas around, and then stop. (Most times. Conversations are different, obviously.)

What Else?

What else will you tell people about how to manage email? What else should we cover?

Photo credit pink sherbet

The thing is, we’re all busy. We all have tons of email. We have no time to get it all handled.

But what will you do to get your email answered (for the most part)? I’ve got a few thoughts, and this relates to some of what Julien Smith and I talked about in Trust Agents. If you want to improve your chances of an email being answered by someone (like me), here are some thoughts and ideas. I’m hoping you add yours to the comments.

This applies more to the business sense of email, not personal. If I know you, it’s okay to email me. Just forgive me that I’m having trouble drowning.

Get Your Email Answered

1. Brevity. I have no time for huge rambling emails. Lead with what you need from me. Fill me in on the backstory (if you feel you must), and then end again with what you need from me. (Most imporant part: lead with what you need from me).
2. Connectivity. If you talk with me on other platforms (like comment on my blog or talk with me on Twitter or Facebook), then I’m much more likely to know who you are.
3. Skip the flattery. PR types: starting with “I love your blog” and then pitching me something I could care less about is a bit of a mismatch. You clearly don’t understand my blog if you’re pitching me stories that don’t relate to what I’m doing.
4. Get right to it. Most emails have about 200 words of throat-clearing. Feel free to just be brief and to the point.
5. Make it mutually beneficial. It’s very nice that you want me to help you get attention, but it’s rare that this does anything for me. Is there anything you’re going to do for my community to make this more worthwhile for them to care about you?
6. Make every email about resolving to a close. I hate open-ended emails. Examples: “what would you like for lunch tomorrow?” Instead, how about, “I’m thinking about either tapas or Korean BBQ tomorrow. Do you have a preference?” One makes things close faster. The other makes the message linger.
7. Give the right lead time. Asking me for something today is probably not going to happen. Asking me for something in three months is going to be forgotten. Think more in terms of two weeks for a typical response, or two or three months for something involving travel. Make sense?
8. Equip a trust agent. It’s easier to get some kind of response by having someone who knows your target person introduce you.

What else? What else do you think will help?

By the way, since I started my contact form, I’ve found that I *love* responding to information that goes through it. It resolves to a Google spreadsheet, and I can bang out several dozen answers a minute on the form. Just a data point.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Photo credit bobster855

I’m SO thrilled.

I also gained 278 new subscribers in the last six days.

What this means is that I’m better defining my newsletter to appeal to the people who will follow me through the next big story arc, through the next big change. It means that people are self-defining, and that they are along for the ride for what we’re experimenting with, and what findings I’ll share with them.

If you’re counting to see who has the most, and if you’re counting only growth, you’re missing an important point. Growth isn’t important. Valuable growth is important. Getting your email newsletter tuned up to serve your desired community is what matters.

Make sense?

What do you like (or NOT like) about the newsletter? What are you doing with your own communities? How are you tuning everything up?

Either get a gmail/yahoo/hotmail account, or buy a domain that can be yours forever. Use that email for secondary contact with any business contacts you might want to retain across many relationships. Do your work on your work email, but keep a “stay in touch” channel alive.

And work often on your own databases. Repeat after me: you live or die by your databases. I learned that working with Jeff Pulver. It’s a lesson that sticks with me to this day.

When I say this, I don’t mean anything especially difficult. I might just mean different types of contact lists. And by different types, that’s the power. My company, for instance, has a database of names who might be interested in marketing, PR and business communications. My company has a database for our events. It’s how we know who to reach with appropriate information that they want.

But personally, I’ve got databases of people I’ve reached out to like you, and I’m working on those databases.

For instance, I just took the contacts from my various mail software, the contacts in LinkedIn, and a few other sources, and I pushed them all into BatchBook, my web-based contact management software. In there, I’m slicing up those contacts into “people I want to touch base with more often,” “people I can reach out to with a project,” “personal advisory board,” and “family.”

Now, with those lists in place, I can then either send individual emails and check in, or if it’s a group type of thing, I can use Blue Sky Factory, my email platform, and send out a batch of mail.

Contact is important. Keeping your networks alive is important. Having more than your corporate email address for me to reach you is important.

In 2009, I can tell you this is all very important.

What are you doing about any of this?

Photo credit SC Fiasco

Basic Move: Have Three Addresses

I have three email addresses: one that I use for conducting general business, one for signing up for various web applications, and one for more important conversations. The first two, I don’t check all day long. I have a few scheduled dips in those boxes to see where things are, and to respond to inquiries. On one of those boxes, I used AwayFind to give people the sense that they can reach me if it’s urgent (so far, the only emails I get from the “urgent” form all say, “I just sent you email.” Grrrrrr!).

On the third email, that’s my business. And so I keep a little indicator light. I don’t read them immediately all the time and interrupt my flow, but I empty that box a few times a day.

Process Once I get Mail

I’ve noticed that I have a rapid flow. Here’s how it looks:

• Information only mail – absorb and delete.
• Information I need mail – copy a note into Evernote, which has web access and searching capabilities. Delete.
• Requests for help – analyze and respond. Delete (or store if I need a record).
• Mail from the boss – respond and store.
• “Generic” mail – automate variations on a response, and customize the important bits. Delete. Note: you probably never get the generics. I reserve them for blind PR pitches, weird software companies, etc.
• Scheduling and task request mail – right into Google Calendar. Tasks into a Google Docs spreadsheet. Web-accessible.
• To-do mail that’s bigger and long – copy/paste the request into Evernote, store the email address, save the mail.

If You Have 1000 Old Mails in the Box

Go through them 100 or so at a time with the above process. Don’t read the new ones. Just try working through 100 here and there. Schedule time on an egg-timer to take a whack at them. (If you want lots more advice on this area, check out You Are Not Your Inbox, which I really loved.)

I’ve kept my box clean for over four weeks, even when I’m out at conferences and on the road. It’s astounding just how this all works once you practice.

What about you? Any ideas and advice?

These posts are made for sharing. Feel free to repost all or portions of this (as long as it’s not for profit). If you do post it, please make sure you kindly link back to [chrisbrogan.com] and give me credit. Thanks!

Note: I use Skitch to do screenshots. It’s cool.

Ten Tech Solutions To Improve Your Productivity

1. Get a system. I’m listening to Stever Robbins, who just put together You Are Not Your Inbox, an audio program that will help you manage your email.
2. Get a proxy. Try out Jared Goralnick’s Away Find. It helps you with a sort of virtual message manager.
3. Practice keeping your inbox at zero. (I’ve explained how I tamed my inbox before.)
4. Learn shortcuts. Here are keyboard shortcuts for Firefox, Safari, IE7, Gmail, Google Reader, and I’m sure you can find more.
5. Cut down on your browsing. Lifehacker (and Julien Smith) pointed out Freedom, a Mac application. I’m sure there’s a PC version. See also Rescue Time
6. Use computer shortcuts and launches. For Macs, it’s Quicksilver . For Windows, I found 10 Quicksilver alternatives listed here. (Disclaimer: I’m not good with Quicksilver. I use Spotlight still).
7. Don’t read blogs directly from the website. At least not first. Start in a good feed reader. I prefer Google Reader. It’s fast, has keyboard shortcuts, and is flexible in letting me bookmark, share, and email posts that I find useful.
8. Find extra time and use it. One way is to use Jott on your phone to send brief messages, to leave yourself reminders, and to take notes for future use.
9. Set up text replacement. This lets you type a few letters and get back several words easily. For Macs, use TextExpander. For Windows, try Texter.
10. Keep good notes. I’m enamored with EverNote. I’ve used it to outline documents, plan conference content, store small lists of email addresses, and even tried the optical recognition feature for photos. It’s worth checking out.

You probably have several other productivity applications to suggest. We can put together quite a list in the comments, if that works for you. What are you doing to stay more productive?

Photo credit, Freshwater2006

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I’m doing all those things wrong on my email newsletter.

Blogs are a whole different matter. Those are where we can expound, should we feel the need. But even then, thinking with brevity in mind has a great opportunity to pay off.

Delivering the payload of an idea briefly is a really great benefit to your audience.

Do you agree?

Photo credit, Maui aina

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One Decision Per Email

It seems counter to cutting down on email to ask you to limit the decisions required in a message to one per email, but I’ve seen it have the opposite effect. Think about choosing to go out to eat: if the first message is, “what day is good for you?”, the second message is, “what type of food do you like?”, and the third message is, “should we invite Jay, even though he laughs a lot and makes it hard to concentrate?”, you’ll see my point. These three questions all have a certain level of decision making to them. The mail on which day (better solved by a phone call) is different from the mail on what type of food, and both are different than whether or not to invite Jay (also probably better solved by a phone call).

Don’t Ever Say “Quick Question.”

I say this because what almost inevitably follows are five to nine paragraphs explaining WHY the question will be asked. It’s as if there’s lots of context needed. It’s almost always not. I’ve written complete strangers and used under 200 words to convey my needs and interests. In fact, I do that often.

Here’s a quick question:

From: Chris Brogan
To: You
Subject: Will you register for PodCamp Boston 3?

I’d like for you to register for PodCamp Boston3. It takes place July 19th-20th at the Harvard Medical School. I feel it will be the most powerful and transformative experience you’ve had with media in a long time.

–Chris…

Your Signature File

I’m in between signature files. When I rebuilt my hard drive, my tools for writing a signature with formatting seem to have broken. So, I’m using a plain text one at present. Let’s just say I’m looking at all of your signature files closely.

Good: ways to contact you online and off (never presume your email address is obvious, especially if your email has been forwarded by others).
Good: very brief descriptor of your title and company (if it’s a business email).
Good: link to your primary blog or website
Bad: all kinds of marketing at the bottom
Bad: links to every social network where you belong

That’s my opinion, but if you want to form your own, pay attention to signature files over the next several days. See what you pay attention to, and what gets overlooked.

Following Up

With the volume of email I receive, some messages get overlooked for a duration of time. Some people follow up perfectly, and others do something that will nearly guarantee that I don’t respond to the second email as well. Here’s what’s useful in a follow-up message:

• Brevity. I probably know I haven’t responded to you, but your message might not be top of mind. Just seeing your name and the words “following up” in the body of the message over a forwarded copy of the last one you sent me will usually jar me into action.
• Simple summary. Maybe your last email was huge and had lots of requirements to it. If you sum these into a few short sentences, it might get me to complete the work.
• Reminder of deadlines. Lots of us work on all kinds of things at the same time. My job alone is challenging, so when you’ve asked me for help with an interview or the like, a little reminder of when you need it (especially if I get two days or three days before the deadline) usually can get me back on track.

Not Just Me

With more and more people overwhelmed, I’m not writing these suggestions and advice to help myself, except insofar as I’m saying that I have the same problems as other people. You might see some advice in here that you wish others would do on YOUR behalf. If so, great. Feel free to forward a link to your friends who need to follow this advice the most, with a loving and courteous message before the link, naturally.

What About You?

What are your ideas for how to improve the state of your inbox? How might you convince people to write emails that get answered faster? Where do you want to correct me?

—

The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.

Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.

Photo Credit, juan23for

1.) I sent mail via the address you provided me by agreeing to link to me via LinkedIn.
2.) I sent an introduction to a service I thought you might want, because you’re in my circle of contacts and because for me, they’re one in the same (my passions about social media, and my contact list).
3.) I sent the introduction with a clear opt-out option so that you could choose to never receive emails from me in that format again (per the canned spam) law.

I use Blue Sky Factory for my email distributions because they have a high standard of what goes out from their platform. They are up front with how they deal with perceptions of spamming, so because I’ve followed their recommended methods for sending an introduction to such an email, I feel that I’ve done it “appropriately.”

Is every email you didn’t ask for spam? No. Is asking someone who considers themselves in my professional circle whether they want to also receive my newsletter spam? No.

There’s a huge difference between spam and “I didn’t want this.”

Or I think there is.

What’s your take? Let’s talk about it here.