Kevin Davis – Speaker, Social Media Expert, Marketing Consultant | Salt Lake City, Utah

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I can?t really imagine life without email, but it certainly doesn?t have all the advantages of face to face communications such as body language and tone. In fact there?s no face at all.

Here?s a simple tip which may help improve your conversions and retention.

An email I received today really grabbed my attention. It was the type of communication that I usually discard upon reading the first few words; as most of these types of emails are just boilerplate – very ho hum sort of stuff.

In this case the sender had included a small photo of himself in the sig line. There was nothing else special about the email format; it was otherwise very plain.

It caught me off-guard a little; imagine that – a human face staring back at me; the face of the sender. Who was this person? So I read the entire email. And there you have it; the sender achieved part of his goal – for the recipient to actually read what was sent.

The other goal that the email achieved through the inclusion of the photo was credibility. I found myself giving his proposal more consideration that I usually would.

Such a simple idea, but in my opinion, really effective. I was trying to remember the last time I?d received an email like this; and aside from newsletters containing author pics or very corporate/professionally designed mass communications; I really can?t remember an instance.

I can see this strategy being a particularly useful when attempting to establish partnerships with other site owners; those of us who get a little jaded by approaches and have gotten well past the stage of inbox excitement. This could also be particularly beneficial in support and pre-sales communications by humanizing these processes a little more and perhaps improving retention and conversion.