One of the hardest things for marketers who claim to understand what they are doing is actually act like it. For people who supposedly understand that there is a flood of things to look at and listen to, they sometimes act as though theirs is the only message out there to be listened to.

Often, the message you want to get out is obscured by “the message.” That is, the tone which you use serves to kill off any hope of actually getting what you want from having sent the message. It’s perhaps not what you said, but how you said it that means that walls go up and doors are closed.

A prime example of this comes when communicating with ISPs concerning blocking issues. Annalivia Ford has some strong words about this very subject on her blog.

Whenever sending out a message, you should take a few moments, minutes, or hours to examine the tone of the message. Does your message to that ISP scream “I think you’re stupid!” or maybe “You really screwed up and now I expect you to fix your mess up before I lose more business!” If so, then maybe you should re-evaluate what you’re saying.

As gets noted in the comments of Annalivia’s blog post, the ISP’s default position is “we want you to tell us what went wrong and what you have done to fix that.” In other words, the tone of your message should be one of explanation instead of accusation.

Which one of these do you think sounds better to someone seeing it in their inbox:

We see that you have blocked the following solicited mail by telling us that these users don’t exist. We know that they do. Please take steps to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future.

or

We have noticed that some of our mail is being blocked due to mailing non-existent users. We have re-examined out systems and things don’t appear to be out of whack and mail sent via other channels is reaching the users without issue. Can you help us understand what is going on here so that we may get a handle on the situation?

The same thing, of course, is true in everything else you send. If you send it with showing your respect for the recipient in mind then better things should happen.

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