ARE YOUR TEMPLATES SENDING THE INTENDED MESSAGE?

How effective are your email templates? How are they received and perceived by the general public? It’s very hard to know the answer to these questions when you are in the business – we are just too close to the material. However, only yesterday I discovered an invaluable (and free) resource right under my nose – my wife! Unlike me, she is not in the car business. She does not read car magazines. She is only interested in cars for their ability to get her from point A to B, for their safety and their reliability. When her lease is up and it’s time to pick out another car she wants that to be as quick and effortless as possible. Sounds like an average customer, right? I was printing some recent mystery shop results in her office and she began to read them. Some letters she liked. Some she didn’t. And some puzzled her - she couldn’t figure out what they were trying to say! I realized then that, because she is not in the business, all of her reactions were valuable. (Favorite comment: “What is this? No woman would read this.” The email had the car’s Ford window sticker copied and pasted into the center of it). But don't listen to my wife; if you have a spouse, or cousin or friend or whatever, male or female, who is not in the car business (and is not impassioned about cars) ask them to mystery shop you and give you their subjective impressions. It beats paying money for an outside focus group. And you might be surprised by the results.