Personal Branding Blog - Dan Schawbel

I receive a lot of spam mail, as well as email messages from those who are clueless about personal branding. The strange thing is that I get more spam on this blog than my email. I just read “Akismet has protected your site from 36,927 spam comments.” Isn’t that just absurd? Don’t people know that bloggers moderate comments to protect them against these vicious attacks? Anyways, this blog post is centered around helping you write better emails, that will be picked up and actually read by receivers.
First, let’s admire those who need a lot of personal branding help. I hope they subscribe to this blog. Note that I edited the messages, so that it wouldn’t reveal their last name, nor email address. I tend to do this as a courtesy to these individuals, despite for their lack of care. Below are two examples of people who spam:

Now for the analysis

• From: The first piece of spam just listed their first name, which to me, tells me absolutely nothing about who the sender is. Right then and there, I would discard the message based on the “robot-like” quality of the sender.
• To: After an incident last year, where I lost my original email address, I changed addresses. For a spammer to still use my old address, they certainly haven’t done their detective work or payed attention to anything I’ve done.
• Subject: Neither tell me exactly what they want. They are both impersonal and I have no idea how the first one knew about my “danschawbel.com” website. The first one says “RE” first, meaning that it must have forwarded it from a previous spam message. Sometimes it makes me wonder why people do this.
• Dear: Neither mention my name, which is another quick notice that it’s spam or someone who has no interpersonal skills.
• Message: In the message, there is a constant flow of sales material, all of which I could care less about. It’s very flat messaging and not only doesn’t deserve my attention, but they obviously don’t want me as a customer, if they aren’t going to take the time to personalize it for me.

Now For Tips

• Your Email Address: Your email address should distinguish your brand from others, just like your domain name. It should be firstname.lastname@host.com. This is by far the best practice I have seen for personal emails out there and one that I even use. If your host is your name, from your website, then you can just put your first name, such that firstname@fullname.com. In this way, we can separate people from robots and see who we know and don’t know.
• From: Make sure that it has your first and last name and that it syncs with your address.
• Title: If you are messaging someone who you already have a relationship with, you can put just about anything you want, as long as you branded your email, so that it is recognizable. If you are pitching to a reporter or someone you don’t know, then the best practice is “Their Name - What You Are Looking For.” Don’t try and be sneaky with your title, just so they open it. They will end up trashing it and be upset that you wasted more of their time.
• Dear: Please use the persons name. Thanks!
• Message: Customize your message to match your audience. If you are sending an email to an executive, then make sure it’s only a few lines, unless he’s expecting more. Gauge who you are sending to and then lengthen or shorten the message based on their schedule and what you are trying to convey.

Final word: If you can’t convince someone to open your email with your personal brand, then you need to do it with the subject line. This works similar in the blogosphere. People take note!