Tag Archives: exciting

Email Etiquette 101

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Emails are abundant in the day to day.

And I’m not using the word abundant lightly. I’m sure everyone who is active on the internet can sympathize with waking up to 30 new unread emails – on a good day.

Email Rules to Live By

I would like to point out a few rules to live by, when it comes to sending emails to anyone.

  • Signing up to a mail list is permission marketing. They want to receive your emails. This puts the onus on the email sender to provide relevant, personal, and necessary information in the communication.
  • Don’t amalgamate email lists, this will lose subscribers interest very quickly – and also known as spamming. This doesn’t mean don’t cross promote. If another site/person’s message is relevant and you suspect your readers will benefit from it, by all means promote it. That’s why they love you.
  • If you expect the subscriber to spend 5 minutes to read your email, is it not fair to expect you to take 5 minutes to go through your contact list and make sure their information (merge tags) (ie. first name, last name, company, etc.) are updated and populated with proper vitals?
  • If there is no particular reason for the email, why are you even hitting that send button? Nobody wants unnecessary emails clogging up their flow.
  • Did you just cc (carbon copy) somebody in on an email and there is no identifiable reason why they should have been included in the communication?
  • If you’ve been discussing a plethora of items with a co-worker, client, etc., and one particular item needs other members involved in the communication, take the time to compose a new email with a new email subject with: an overview of where the discussion is at, any relevant background information, followed by specific requests. Don’t waste my time by making me go through the entire conversation history trying to understand why I was just included in this communication, and if there is anything I’m supposed to be doing.
  • Just cc’ing somebody at the end of a long conversation is extremely frustrating, not to mention the possibility of breaching confidentiality or exposing a level of formality between you and a contact only achieved after a long discussion or many messages.
  • Remember, you’re a person and you’re engaging somebody on a personal level – much like letter mail – so focus on being coherent, precise, and easy to understand. Unless, of course, you’re a unique writer sending out abstract writing short stories…
  • If you’re not getting responses from email subscribers, it’s not their fault. It’s your email, it’s your message, it’s your content, it’s you pressing the send button. This is your image and it is your engagement as a producer to your subscriber; make the communication valuable and if it’s not, change it up.
  • If your message/request is exciting, alluring, clear, and cohesive, you might convince me to do it. Otherwise, you have very little chance to engage me and I’m going to get bored after reading the 2nd line in the email.
  • If your message/request isn’t exciting, alluring, clear, and cohesive, I will not respond to it immediately which risks the hazard of being buried in my inbox.
  • If you have an email, and a call to action, there had better be a hyperlink for me to click to follow your directions. This makes it easy for me, and also smoothly directs the flow to your website, event page, etc.
  • “When does this end? And why am I even waiting for this to end?” <~ this is not a good reaction to an email.

I’ve amalgamated this from a variety of sources over the years (Seth Godin in particular), and my own personal experiences.

Do you have any other email taboos you’d like to illuminate? I’d love to hear them in the comments below.

Good Habits

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A body that is fed regular exercise is a healthy body. The Health Canada strongly recommends having 30 to 60 minutes of daily activity to ensure that the body stays fit. This does not have to happen all at the same time, but they do recommend for you to do it in at least 10 minute increments. Keeping an exercise schedule that is less than 10 minutes is not adequate enough to get one’s body warmed up, let alone keeping the heart rate up to ensure that maximum gain can be felt from the exercise.

exercise

We all feel the same way after work or school, when you just get in the door from a long day, and all you feel like doing is curling into bed and falling asleep. Don’t be ashamed, everybody feels this way. Its what you do when you feel that way that makes the difference between effective people and not effective people. It has proven that getting daily exercise increases blood flow, which in turn stimulates the mind, which in turn wakes a person up, makes them feel energetic and refreshed and ready to finish off the day with renewed enthusiasm. It also assists in reducing stress, strengthens the essential organs of the body, and will change your outlook on life. When you feel you have a healthy body, you will be that healthy person. The following are a few tricks that I use to ensure that I stick to healthy habit of exercise:

Play Aggressive Music

When you are driving home, or walk in the door, try putting on some music that you know makes you feel more aggressive. It will psych your mind up into a more energized state that will give you the motivation needed to get that exercise done. Start Off Slow. Note: don’t let this influence your driving habits though, that is just dangerous.

sweat

When you’re starting a new exercise habit, trying to get back into the mode of exercising your body, it’s hard to jump right into a 5 to 7 day a week schedule that immediately taxes your body. Start with a 3 day schedule, where your exercising say Monday, Wednesday, and Friday right after work.

Push Yourself

Motivation has to come from within. Nobody is going to be a better motivator for yourself than yourself. You are the one looking at your body in the mirror, you are the one with health problems, you are the one that feels depressed, so it is you who needs to take charge of yourself and push ahead into new and exciting territory. When you are into a nice routine remember not to get comfortable with the same exercise that your doing every time, with the same amount of distance or weight used. Keep increasing your distance, or speed, or weight that your using to continually grow, pushing yourself to be the best that you can be. The best you only dreamed you had in you.

work_exercise

Also try and push yourself to try new activities. If you find that the same old ones are just dragging on you, try some new things that you’ve never known before. Shadow boxing or power walking, what about dancing?

Keep The Fun

Every person that I talk to always has the excuse that it’s just too much work, and they really don’t enjoy going to the gym to press the bench over their heads like a monkey. Not everybody needs to go to the gym to seek their exercise. Try playing a game of basketball, going for a hike in the woods, or practicing yoga. Sometimes if you focus on games or activities that require additional people to play you will find yourself using that as an excuse not to get your exercise, that nobody else wants to play. Keep a big list of activities that you enjoy doing that are individual activities, and that don’t require extra people to perform. The key here is to enjoy it. If you don’t actually enjoy going for a hike, or stretching for yoga, try and trick your mind into thinking its fun, smile and enjoy it! You’re making your body healthy.