Self-employed professionals and at-home businesses not only remove themselves from the daily commute, they reduce the need for separate utility connections, bills, air conditioning and more by utilizing buildings that would otherwise sit idle. This kind of multi-tasking is the ultimate in the Reduce “R” of the recycling triangle.

So if green measures are important when you are shopping for services, consider the benefits of micro-businesses that reduce their impact on the environment by avoiding the intense overhead larger companies require. In addition, lower overhead usually means these businesses can offer more affordable services.

1. Useful Subject Lines

The subject line of your e-mail is the most important thing you write, and there are several things to consider when writing a good one:

a) Think ahead: Two months from now, when you or the recipient is looking for this e-mail amongst thousands of others to clarify a detail, think about a subject line that will actually identify the contents. Let me tell you something, “FWD: RE: Project” will not be helpful. Re-write the subject line of replies and forwards to reflect what is in that particular message.

b) Think focus: If you are broaching multiple topics, either mention them all in the subject line and visibly divide up the content of the e-mail by topic (using bold headers) OR better yet. Send seperate e-mails for different topics. Crazy? Again, think ahead two months. Will you remember that you sent the change to the price estimate at the bottom of the e-mail about color choices? I think not.

c) Think branding: mention your company name, the project name or some other unique identifier that will immediately identify the project. I make web sites – so a lot of my clients send me e-mail about “my web site”, because they usually only have one. I work on many. So it would be more helpful to write a subject line like “Widgets-R-Us web site change”.

d) Think action: Inboxes are often used as to do lists. So what is it you want the recipient to do? Mention it in the subject line. That way, your task is constantly staring them in the face and they will do it just to be able to move your task into a “done” folder.

e) Think Duplicate: Repeat all information in the subject line in the body of the e-mail. Don’t leave important info only in the subject line. Some readers seperate the two and make it hard to connect them visually. Don’t make the reader work any harder than necessary.

2. Actionable Bodies

a.  Think Outline. People don’t really read e-mail. They should, but they don’t. So knowing that, you need to make your e-mail easy to scan.Many e-mail readers allow for at least the use of bold formatting. Take advantage of it and structure your e-mail in outline form. Separate topics by headers (or send them as separate e-mail). More complicated formatting like bullet lists and html may not show up. Keep it simple.

b. Thick Sticky. Place links at the bottom of the e-mail. This may seem the opposite of helpful, but if you bothered to write information in the e-mail, you want them to at least scan it. If they see a link at the top of the e-mail, they will click on it, meaning to go back and read your e-mail later, but they won’t. So, if it’s important, like “This is a rough draft”, then make it clear and bold and well before they actually see the link.

c. Thick Call to Action.  Communicate the needed (or desired) response first, then fill in with the reasons why. Readers scan, usually the first paragraph and good luck if you wrote more than that. Don’t bury the response at the bottom of a long missive. Write it first. If they then care to know why, they will read more to find out.

3. Attachments and Includes

A long time ago I made a commitment to never finish typing the word “attached” in an e-mail without first attaching the file. It has saved me many a useless e-mail referencing a non-existant file. Attach first. Write e-mail later. If you still manage to forget the attachment, try going to your send box, forward the e-mail you already wrote (so you don’t have to retype it, and send from there.)

Also, it works best to attach files rather than include them in the body of the e-mail. Readers that disable images may hide the image entirely, and some popular e-mail readers make it difficult to copy and paste an image out of the e-mail itself. If you really want to include it, then also attach it.

4. Informative Endings

If you don’t already have a signature for your business e-mail, start there. Include all your pertinent contact information. Then add it to all your e-mails. Even the quick answers to a long thread. Seems redundant? Maybe, but again, if someone is referring back to an e-mail in order to respond to you, they should be able to find contact info on each e-mail. I can’t tell you how many time people have sent me e-mails to “call them” and don’t include any contact info whatsoever. OK – maybe I should have them as a contact in my contact list. But effective business e-mail, and good customer service, includes easy to act upon contact information.

5. E-mail Address Last

Another trick I learned early on was to wait until the e-mail was proofed and ready to send before entering the recipient’s e-mail address. This prevents the accidental e-mail sent before it was ready. Instead my e-mail program saves it if I get interrupted and refuses to send until I have the address in the to line.

As far as copies go, if you do copy an e-mail to someone else, make sure they are going to understand two things: a) they are not the primary recipient, and b) why they are being copied.

6. Sent Mail

While not all e-mail programs do this automatically, I recommend keeping sent copies of e-mail. Or blind copy an e-mail address designed to archive mail. Perhaps not all e-mails require this treatment, but not only does sent mail often serve as a back up to mistakenly deleted originals, but can be incredibly useful in tracing when information was sent, responded to, etc.

Kim Dailey is a webmaster with Papyrus Document & Design, LLC a company with experience creating web sites and stores for commercial, non-profit, and public sector clients throughout the United States.

To succeed in any business, you have to view your business from the customer’s point of view. Your -to them will be unwelcome unless it meets one or more of the following criteria:

• it was requested
• it addresses a need of theirs (not just their market segment)
• it is appropriate to them at this moment in time
• it is not too frequent that they get annoying
• it is not too rare for them to remember their relationship with you
• it is difficult for them to view, use or unsubscribe from

Even if it meets these criteria, it still may not be welcome. They may just be having a bad day. Any whim on your customer’s part can cause them to click the “This is Spam” button; and that’s bad.

When they (or you) do that, it sends a report to the Internet Service Provider that you are a spammer. If enough of your recipients do this, your provider will block your domain to all their members. This is bad.

How do you avoid being reported as a spammer?

1. Don’t send spam
   • send only to opt-in emails,
   • send appropriate, carefully timed emails, and
   • remove unsubscribes instantly
2. Don’t use your e-mail account to send e-mails,
   • use a professional service (see below)

Professional Services

There are companies that will not only send the e-mails for you, they will:

• handle the unsubscribe requests,
• provide templates for professional looking results,
• gather statistics on how many people opened and clicked, and
• dipense advice on how best to word, time and send your e-mail.

These companies exist based upon their good relationship with the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) that receive their mail, so they negotiate on your behalf to make sure your mail gets through.

One company that has worked with my clients is iContact, which allows user to send personalized text or HTML messages, RSS feeds, and surveys from any computer, and automatically keep track of their subscriptions. They allow a great amount of flexibility in designing your own look and feel to match your company branding efforts, which is important to me as a designer. Other leading companies are Constant Contact and MailChimp.

There is, of course! Trade journals. But wait, I hear you saying, trade journals are expensive. Why yes, they are, if you subscribe directly from them. But there are ways to receive journals at no cost.

Freebizmag.com is the portal I use to receive magazines at no cost. (I am not a reseller, affiliate or paid reviewer - just a happy customer.) While you do have to provide a decent amount of professional information about your trade and business buying influence, this is understandable for what I get in return. They match me to journals in and around my industry which offer free subscriptions. Then they offer additional magazines that match my profile. I get emails periodically with offers, some of which are more on target than others. All subscriptions have no strings. There is no automatic renewal with a charge. I do sometimes get phone calls from publishers trying to keep the contact info up-to-date. I consider this the cost of the subscription and deal with them politely. And they do link to a site which offers free “trials”, but you don’t have to click.

I especially like that I can expose myself to related industries and skim some surface knowledge on what’s available without much time or effort on my part. I am primarily a designer, but knowing what printers and exhibitors are dealing with these days helps me when designing print or exhibit pieces.

Added bonus! Once you have given up your demographic information, publishers of non-trade magazines may also be interested in sending you publications. I have received travel magazines, women’s weeklies, entertainment magazines, and even motorsports subscriptions. Since I love magazines in general, this is a terrific perk for me.

Why would they send you free copies of magazines when they normally charge? Journals sell advertising based upon recipient counts. Advertisers don’t always care whether a reader paid to view their ad or not (although many journals will reveal the difference in the fine print). So it’s worthwhile to give away copies if it makes the publication more attractive to paying advertisers.

In addition, lots of journals are available electronically from their web sites. If you have a pda and like to read pdfs on it, that might be a great way to utilize your commute or queue time. I prefer hard copies, myself, so I opt for the magazines that will mail me paper.

Are there other ways to connect with free subscriptions – sure there are. I’m just not personally familiar with others. Type “free magazine subscriptions” into a search engine to get a list. Just be sure to read the fine print and I wouldn’t enter any credit card numbers – it shouldn’t be necessary.