ESL Basics

Chances are if you are reading this, you have an email address. In fact, if you have signed up for our newsletter or registered to make comments on one of Andrea’s videos you have to have an email address. Email is everywhere and used by countless individuals. Well, maybe it is not countless because according to Email-Marketing-Reports.com there are roughly 1.4 billion email users.

So, assuming you are one of those users, how do you use English effectively for business in your emails? Many posts on email will be written in the future, but, today we are looking at the greeting or salutation. This is the first line of the email.

Below are several examples of common greetings used in emails. I will start with more formal and professional examples and move my way down to personal and informal examples. Please note that part of your job as a business person is being able to tell what type of greeting is appropriate for your audience.

Professional / Formal

• Mr. Jones, (Using the last name in the salutation conveys formality in the email. The only exception to this is when you use their last name as a nickname like “Jonesy”)
• Good Morning,
• Hello Mr. Jones,
• Good Evening,
• Ladies and Gentlemen,

Casual but still respectful

• Hey guys,
• Friend,
• Hi Team,
• All,
• Hey,
• Matt, (Using just the first name can be a powerful salutation because it isn’t so informal that you show disrespect, but it is still their name. Make sure you are on a first-name basis with the receiver of your email.)

Informal

• What’s up,
• Dude,
• Loser,
• Jonesy,
• Hey man,
• No salutation (Greetings are usually important to have, but if you are making a quick note sometimes you don’t need a greeting.)

This website is hosted by Bluehost.com. If you are thinking about starting a website or if you are not satisfied with your hosting company, check out the hosting at bluehost here. 

A pitch can mean the act of throwing a baseball from the pitcher's mound to home plate for a batter to hit, but it gets a whole new meaning in business. A pitch generally is a presentation or petition to someone else for their support, mostly financial support. Formal pitches are usually made standing in front of others with the use of a visual aid, but can be made informally just in conversation.

The type and length of pitch will vary depending on your audience and your aim, or goal for the meeting. If you want a $5 gift card to give away at a local school fundraiser, your pitch will be much less formal and professional than if you were pitching to venture capitalists to borrow $5 million. My point is simply that a pitch can take shape in many different ways.

In my opinion, when making a pitch it is important clearly present or explain "the big picture." By this, I mean that you want your audience to understand why you are doing what you are doing and what your plans are for the future. By giving a big picture of your plan, it is easier for your audience to understand your motivation and see if your motives align with their motives.

The important thing to keep in mind is that you are trying to convince your audience that they should care about what you are doing. That is easier said than done, but when in doubt, let your passion and desire show in your pitch. Get excited and your audience will be inspired by your passion.

This post was inspired by the video below, which I found on this post. You can also read my post about pitching an idea to your boss or co-workers.

This marketing tool is similar to webinar in the sense, that it is a word, but it came from a change to another business tool. So, webinar started with seminar... infomercial started with commercial. A television commercial is something that is broadcast on television typically in the form of an advertisement. It is a short clip (typically under 1 minute) that promotes a certain product or service.

An infomercial has two unique factors that set it apart from an average commercial. First is the length of time; infomercials are a lot longer than commercials because they are more informative. The amount of information about the product or service is another distinct characteristic of an infomercial. Typically infomercials give background information about the product as well as demonstrate various uses of the product.

Sometimes viewers have a negative perspective on infomercials, but don't be fooled; infomercials can be very powerful marketing tools if done to the right market and with the right product. The fact that you can get your product in front of someone is very important, especially for a product that is easier to demonstrate than to explain. Consumers are not constantly thinking about their problems and how to fix them, so a great plus to infomercials is that you can show the many uses of a product all within a 5-30 minute span and the view can see how the product could be useful to their life.

When producing an infomercial, make sure to show the ease of use, and try to build confidence in the mind of the viewer in your product because most people who watch infomercials may be skeptical of your product. And be EXTRA careful if you are doing a live infomercial about a product, otherwise you could end up like the person in the video below. 

Webinar? Is that even an English word? According to dictionary.com, no, it is not a word yet, but if my suspicions are correct, it will be a word sometime soon. Even though it is not technically a word, it's a word you will see sooner or later as you do business in English. To better understand the term webinar, we must first start with the term seminar. A seminar is a meeting of people to discuss a specific topic. It does not have to just be business related, but they are a common practice in business. 

Webinar takes the term seminar one step further to explain a seminar that is conducted solely on the Internet. Another common term to describe webinar is the term, web conferencing. Now that we know what a webinar is, why should we care about a webinar? What good is a webinar for my business?

Well, as a business person, you can benefit from a webinar in two main ways, as a customer and as a seller. As a customer, you can get free webinars from your vendors or sometimes you can find a good paid webinar to help you or your team, learn or get trained on a certain topic. An example of this is from a company that I use for data collection and surveys called SurveyGizmo.  They offer free webinars to train their customers on their product and help them as they learn more of its functionality. (you can check out their survey blog here)

That leads me to how you can use webinars for your business. As you saw with SurveyGizmo, they offer webinars as a support function for their customers, which increases the value their product. Also, webinars can be your product. If you are an expert on a certain topic and there are people willing to hear you teach or speak on that topic, you could charge them money for your webinar. 

Webinars are a great tool to help you learn a topic, conduct e-commerce, or increase support services to your clients so take a look at your company and see if adding or attending a webinar is right for your business.