Best Business Practices for Photographers [188]
E-mail can bypass even the most protective secretary or assistant, provided you have the right e-mail address (which is usually as simple as figuring out the client's e-mail nomenclature). You can be certain that it's not left on a fax machine or in a junk-mail pile.
Suppose, for example, you are looking to do business with Smith and Jones Advertising, and their website is sjadvertising.com. Do a search on the Internet for @sjavertising.com, and invariably it will turn up numerous names, so you learn that the e-mail address for Richard Smith is Richard_Smith@sjadvertising.com or maybe rsmith@sjadvertising.com or some variation thereof. However they structure it, you can then use that same naming convention to reach the person you are trying to without much problem at all. This works about 95 percent of the time, save for when a firm uses just the person's first name and there's more than one person with that name or when it's a major corporation and you are trying to reach John Smith, as there is likely more than one person with that name.
Be very judicious about how you reach out to people with whom you've not been in a previous dialogue or with whom you've not interacted in some time. You do not want to end up on a spam blacklist. As such, the art of subject lines, salutations, and the first few sentences is critical to ensure that your e-mail doesn't get trashed.
Also, it is possible to take something written out of context because it lacks vocal tone. So many people become incensed at reading an e-mail that was written in haste. This can be avoided if you simply read the e-mail back to yourself to ensure it says what you want it to say.
For example, when we send a client an estimate, the subject line is something like:
Photo Estimate for: Wednesday, February 29, 2006
Photo Estimate, as requested
Photo Estimate for cover assignment of CEO Portrait
When we send invoices as PDFs via e-mail, the subject line is something like:
Invoice for photography on Feb29-2006
John Harrington Photo Invoice #12345
And when we correspond with the client regarding past-due invoices, the subject line is something like:
Checking in RE: past-due photography invoice(s)
And in instances in which we are re-sending an e-mail, we use the subject line:
RESEND: Photo Estimate for cover assignment of CEO Portrait
When we have, as the result of a dialogue with the client, made adjustments to the estimate or invoice that was previously sent, we use:
REVISED: Photo Estimate for cover assignment of CEO Portrait
These e-mails result in maximizing the possibility that the message will be seen and noticed as something other than spam, and thus, read.
Of the utmost importance is the change in the attached file's filename. Knowing that the files will go into the same Attachments folder that the client's e-mail uses or will be saved to a desktop, you don't want your current attachment to overwrite the original one. Further, when the file is on the client's desktop, although it might make sense to you to give it the client's last name or company name, the client probably has numerous other files similarly named. Choosing a name such as JHPhoto-Inv1234 or some variation thereof will give the client instant recognition of what the file is and what to do with it (hopefully pay it!).
Elsewhere in this book, there are numerous examples of my e-mail style and what my salutation, e-mail body, and closing look like, so I will not rehash it extensively here. However, it should be something like:
I would encourage you to use the client's first name, instead of Mr. [client's last name]. You're on equal footing with this client, and the "Mr." sets a tone that is just a bit too formal. There are circumstances when it is appropriate (such as when you are writing to someone who stole your work, the head of an accounting department who's not paying your bill, or such), but most client correspondence,