PR e-mail...overused, abused and invaluable

"I predict that by 2010, 100 percent of network traffic will be packetized. None of it will be voice because we will be too mad at each other from sending flame e-mails."
Vint Cerf, executive vice president of MCI and one of the founders of the Internet.

It's true. Emotions don't travel well in the written form.

A smile, a wink of the eye, a smirk, a furled brow...are fine for face-to-face communications. However, they are completely missing when you use the killer application of the Internet...e-mail. Despite the hype and global business promises of the World Wide Web, the most used, most useful and most abused Internet tool is e-mail.

It has changed the way we work. Meetings become less frequent. Clients, agencies, editors and customers instantly communicate with each other around the globe. So much so that in many instances if materials have to be shipped to someone, you have to e-mail and ask for their address. E-mail has done more than any other technology to reduce the amount of paper an office uses. E-mail is faster than conventional postal delivery...and as dependable. Shortly after you hit the Send button the information is usually received by your "target audience."

In fact Postmaster General Martin Runyon recently predicted that the giant quasi-government enterprise would lose about $1.4 billion in 1998, due in no small part to the increasing use of Internet e-mail. According to the USPS nearly 40 percent of today's business and personal correspondence bypasses the postal service over the Internet. Recently the General Services Administration (GSA) surveyed federal users and found that they considered e-mail more effective than faxing, voice mail, telephone, regular mail, video conferencing and even personal meetings.

E-mail has taken off so rapidly in the communications industry that when an e-mail server, network or Internet provider's connection goes down people wonder how they can get in touch with someone. They wonder how long before they can get to their incoming mail. It has become so ingrained that an editor of an industry publication recently commented, "If someone doesn't have an e-mail address I probably don't need to talk to him."

But like any valuable communications tool people often don't understand how to use it properly or quickly find ways to abuse it's use. E-mail is so much a part of our business life that the Electronic Messaging Association estimates that more than 94 million users will send over 5.5 trillion e-mail messages in 1999.

Doing Our Part

How many of these will be sent by PR scribes we'll never know. You and I both know though that we will be major contributors. Just as with publicists' practice of shot gunning releases through the postal service, we're already hearing editors are becoming numb to the e-mail messages they receive. Some say they dump gigabytes of e-mail every week into the electronic trash bin.

Take an editorial acquaintance who finally found the industry hook for his monthly editorial column on Saturday around midnight. He sat down at his home computer, booted it up and was preparing to be creative, insightful and profound. Even before he could hit the first keystroke he was greeted with 90 unopened e-mails he had received in the past 12 hours. An hour after he sat down to create his monthly message, he shut his system down and went to bed. The creative mood had been dulled. Perhaps on Sunday he would be in a better frame of mind to write his column.

With the increasing use of push technology, the application of spam junkmail and the growing use of single keystroke e-mail mailing lists; each of us have to be concerned that we will dull the value of this important communications tool.

E-Mail Don'ts

• Don't use e-mail emotionally. We've been criticized a few times ourselves when a tongue-in-cheek comment didn't quite come across in an e-mail. Since e-mail lacks the immediate feedback and verbal nuances of the spoken word don't use it when you are joking or are angry. Rather than a flamemail response, talk to the person face to face or at least over the phone.
• E-mail should be avoided in a supervisor-subordinate, client-agency conflict or a PR person-reporter "issues" discussion.
• Verbal communications gives the benefit of immediate feedback. Both parties can understand how the message is being received either by the listener's facial expressions or the tone of his or her voice.
• Use the bullet-proof Internet e-mail test. If you aren't willing to have the e-mail printed in tomorrow's paper or you wouldn't make the same comments in public...don't send them. That includes off-color jokes, sexist or racist language or anything that can be construed as contributing to a hostile environment. E-mail messages are about as private as if they were posted in your favorite restaurant.
• Avoid the automobile cocoon syndrome. Just as some people tend to become more aggressive with their driving because they are anonymous and remote behind the wheel, the same can happen with e-mail. A number of columnists have told us they receive "interesting" e-mail after their columns appear with remarks people would never say in- person.
• Don't spam. Spamming or sending a release or announcement in a shotgun manner is not only discourteous to the editor/reporter but it is an insult to them.
• We have an active database of about 3,000 e-mail addresses of on-line, print, radio and TV editors, reporters and analysts located around the globe. Some like John Markoff of the New York Times and Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal are used only occasionally -- when the message is just right. On the other hand certain industry analysts and selected technology beat reporters addresses are used weekly.
• When we develop a story pitch, it may go to as few as three-four editors. When it's a news release it may go to 150-200 people around the globe. But each time the specific publication and reporter is individually selected to receive the message. We seldom read spammed messages so why should a reporter read our spammed e-mail news release just because we're too lazy to individualize the mailing? Besides, if recent legislative interest is any indication there may be stiff limitations and penalties levied for people who insist on "direct mailing" their PR announcements to the global press community.
• Think before you use the Send button. You may have read news reports of department heads sending staff salary or other sensitive data to everyone on the organization's distribution list. Likewise, PR launch plans and company business plans have been accidentally sent to editors and reporters. These are disasters.
• But to a lesser degree each of us has sent an e-mail to someone only to discover "immediately" after it left that it didn't have the attachments you mentioned. Or the attachments were sent in a form that couldn't be read by the intended recipient. Your only recourse is to apologize and resend the message/attachments. To overcome the compatibility issue, we've solved the problem by cut-and-pasting the message into the body of the e-mail. Unless we know the recipient's system configuration you are bound to encounter problems until applications truly do become seamless. Speaking of attachments, the general rule should be that unless the recipient knows what you are sending don't send it. Editors and reporters we've talked with hate it when they open a "general delivery" e-mail and the attachment automatically copies to their hard drive. It's a waste of time to leave one storage area to open another, open the file and then determine the release is a waste of time and should be simply trashed. Worse yet most are gun-shy about receiving "strange" attachments. The reason? It's an easy way to transmit viruses that can destroy a few files or an entire hard drive of information. For example a few months ago we received the press registration mailing list from a convention management organization. Every time we opened the file it released a virus that would eat up a file. No matter how often we ran anti-virus software against the file the pesky virus would reappear. The solution was to print out the entire file, delete the file and re-input the information. Safe computing practice says that whenever you receive an attachment with an .EXE, .BAT or .COM extension you should run anti-virus software against it...before you open the file. It's great in theory and itworks. Unfortunately few of us practice safe computing. As a result, most editors tell us they automatically delete the attachments rather than take a chance of destroying everything on their hard drive.
• Practice good netiquette and don't send spoof releases. Spoofed messages are those that are sent with false header information that disguises the sender. If you're not proud enough of your work or your client perhaps you should find a new career, new company or new client.

E-Mail Do's

• Use e-mail whenever possible. From a management perspective it's significantly less expensive than sending the average business letter. And as we noted before it is faster...almost instantaneous.
• In addition to personalizing who is receiving your announcement, be very descriptive in the subject area of your e-mail. Putting Press or News Release in the subject area makes it very easy for the editor/reporter to quickly hit the delete button. Instead, make the subject information newsworthy, inviting and sometimes even intriguing. Just as editors receive 300-500 news releases in the s-mail every day, they receive the same and more e-mail announcements. They don't have the time or desire -- and we would suspect the inclination -- to wade through every e-mail to find the one or two announcements they are interested in developing. Think of their e-mail screen as a billboard and you have less than five seconds to capture their attention.
• If you're sending an e-mail release or announcement format it properly -- obviously write using good English and sound journalistic style --so the recipient won't hit the delete key even before attempting to read it. Sending out a release created for paper distribution and dropping it into an e-mail message is a wasted opportunity.
• Until recently we used to follow the "standard" release format of placing the contact information at the top of the e-mail announcement, ahead of the announcement itself. After studying the practice we suddenly came to the realization that it was more important to give the editor, reporter or analyst the message first. Then if he or she was interested in obtaining more information they would contact us. As a result, we shifted the contact information to the end of the release.
• The recipient can immediately read the summary headline and condensed information lead. If they want more information they either send the e-mail back with their questions or go to the end of the release, get the phone number and make a call. It was a minor change but one that has remarkably improved our results.
• If you've developed a backgrounder or white paper on a subject don't bother sending the long document unless the reporter or analyst requests it. Instead, add an editor's note at the end of the announcement along with the Web site URL location of the document(s). The minor addition has dramatically increased the use of client's Web site news sections. Editors, reporters and analysts are able to obtain as much information as they want and need instantly, regardless of clock, calendar...or location.

The Web may get all the glory but it's e-mail that gets results when it's used properly. While we've focused most of our attention on getting information to the media, the Internet and e-mail are also excellent tools on responding to and working with all of your organization's stakeholders including customers, resellers, employees, investors, security analysts, suppliers and special interest groups.

Or as someone recently said, "The Internet should really be viewed as PR on steroids. It's the ultimate one-on-one communications tool."

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