Email first impressions—they matter!

I recently took a class at a local fitness studio where a friend was teaching. It was a cardio kickboxing class of sorts (read: 60 minutes of cardio hell)—and she wanted me to drop in and check it out. Of course I was asked to fill out a standard form,including my name, address, email address, and signature on the liability release. About a week after the class, I received an email from the studio—a simple message and a nice touch:

Thank you for dropping in, we hope you enjoyed your workout! We just wanted to keep you posted on some upcoming events and workshops in the hopes to see you back.

I opened it on my phone and my jaw dropped. I had to scroll through over 35 names to get to the body of the email—the studio included all of our emails in the “To” field! Whenever I receive an email addressed to more than just myself, or more than myself and a handful of other known individuals, I shudder a bit. It’s certainly not professional and, whether intentional or not, it jeopardizes client privacy—everyone who received that email now has my name and email along with the 35 other drop-ins that week.

When I finished scrolling through all the addresses to the body of the email, my jaw dropped a bit further—every paragraph was in a different color font. From purple to orange to bright pink. Colorful? Yes. Professional? No.

First, it’s really great that this business is actively reaching out to “drop-ins" each week. This type of follow-up can make a significant difference in conversion rates and overall revenue.

The email I received took quite a bit of time for the owner or manager to create. She had to go through each of our liability waivers to collect our email addresses and type them by hand into the email—a fair amount of time (always in limited supply) and prone to typos and other errors.

There's a better way, however!

In my next post I’ll share how Pike13’s integration with MailChimp can save you time, minimize busy work, and protect client privacy. You can send professional, branded, automated emails with little or no effort on your part.

photo credit: Ed Yourdon via photopin cc