I’ll Check My E-Mail “Real Soon Now”

I’m not making this one up: One Florida dive destination I know (who is so far behind the times, they still don’t have a computerized Point-of-Sale system…or Nitrox), once relegated their e-mail to being answered by “some computer-savvy kid” who came in on weekends.

Of course, the bulk of the e-mail they received was from people wanting to know about getting reservations for the upcoming weekend — so waiting until that weekend to answer them didn’t do a damn bit of good.

The fact is, the majority of your customers are working professionals who live with e-mail on a daily basis — and expect you to as well. That’s why responding to e-mail on a timely basis is something you can’t postpone for even as much as a day.

People don’t e-mail you because they have all the time in the world; they e-mail you because they don’t. When someone sends you an e-mail, they expect a response that is at least as timely as what they receive from co-workers and business associates. And if you can’t respond that quickly, they’ll find a dive store that does. If you master no other computer skill, learn to respond quickly and professionally to e-mail.

Of course, for people to be able to e-mail you, they need your e-mail address. It should appear prominently on all your printed materials, from business cards to Yellow Pages ads to brochures and flyers.

Obviously, people need to be able to e-mail you directly from your website. Some stores are reluctant to put a mailto: link on their website (one that, when people click it, automatically opens their e-mail program and addresses a message to you), as mailto: links are frequently captured by spammers. As an alternative, you can create a forms-based page, which allows people to e-mail you without putting your address in an easily captured mailto: link.

Similarly, some stores like to cut down on the amount of spam they receive by using a spam-filtering service. Here, when people e-mail you for the first time, they get an automated response from the filtering service, asking them to go a special website (or do something similar) to confirm that they aren’t a spammer.

This can drastically cut down on the amount of spam you receive. And — guess what? — it can also cut down substantially on the number of legitimate e-mails you receive from people wanting to spend money with you. It’s kind of like asking people to call your answering service first, and wait for you to call them back. In theory, it’s not asking a lot of them. Nevertheless, your customers don’t want to be bothered with even that much hassle.

All things considered, it may be better to deal with spam than it is to risk losing a sale.

“The US Postal Service is good enough for me” »

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