In today’s marketplace, ignoring the e-mail inbox could shorten your business lifespan by killing your brand image.

Think about it: Would you intentionally ignore your clients and send messages saying you don’t care about them or their business? That is exactly what you do when you ignore email or respond slowly or inaccurately.

Brand image is built from the inside out. Every communication that takes place between a company and a client, potential client, vender, consultant and even competitor results in a positive or a negative brand impression. And when those impressions are added together, they make up brand image.

As consultants, our brand images are our lifeblood. They must reflect near perfection, if we expect businesses to trust our expertise and to want our advice and recommendations. Furthermore, we need to ensure that our clients’ understand the dangers of messy e-mail communications, both inbound and outbound.

A recent survey of the retail industry tells the tale of what looks like an approaching trend in the business world.

Current numbers from this survey indicate that most businesses are in a lot of trouble when it comes to their ‘’customer e-service.’’ 26 percent of retailers surveyed failed to respond to email inquiries from customers seeking to make a purchase.

In the same study the cross-industry response rate (all verticals) of 41 percent shows that businesses in general have a pretty abysmal record. 47 percent of retailers, for example, fail to respond to customer e-mails within 24 hours, against a cross-industry rate of only 61 percent.

Conducted in September 2006, this study also benchmarked the quality of company responses to client email inquiries. Among companies that do respond to client or customer emails, 35 percent of retailers sent emails rated by Benchmark Portal as ‘’good’’ at answering customers’ questions while the cross-industry rate is a sad 17 percent. 28 percent of retailers sent emails rated "fair," compared to a cross-industry rate of 26 percent; and 9 percent of retailers sent "poor" emails, compared to the cross-industry rate of 14 percent.

Another study provides even worse news for e-centric client and customers, and ultimately for overall business success. This one, reported by Internet Retail, shows that 51 percent of small- to mid-size companies and 41 percent of large businesses do not respond to customer or client email at all. And of those who do respond, 70 percent of small- to mid-size companies and 61 percent of large businesses do not respond within 24 hours.

Since brand image depends on every single representative of a company, no matter their functional area, it doesn’t matter who inside a business deletes or responds badly to email communications. Doing so creates a destructively negative impression to the person who sent the email. Since every external and internal communication creates an impression that impacts the brand, those communications also impact marketing and sales results, and consequently the bottom line.

Another recent survey on the state of email marketing business reports that nearly 2.7 trillion e-mail messages will be sent out by 2007 ending. Businesses cannot afford to ignore those numbers, even if only a tiny percentage of these e-mails fall into the commercial category. Alienating even one client hurts brand image and eventually sales. Alienating hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of e-mailers over the life of a business can therefore be deadly.

Read on…

- Article by Wale Bello