You’re all salivating for my COVID-19 sanitizing strategy, right?
Actually, I’m kind of guessing you’re not. Which is good, because it’s boring.
Clear-Writing’s hand-washing and cleaning policies are basically the Furman household’s hand-washing and cleaning policy. Which has always been clean enough for you to eat over without feeling icky, but don’t look behind the fridge*
*Or the couch for that matter.
I have to say, most companies haven’t done a good job with their messaging for this. Because most of them have an undertone of “please keep buying our stuff”. It’s just very blatantly self-serving. Does the online-only retailer really need to tell me how they are handling this? Thanks, shoelaces.com* for alleviating my fears.
*Not a real website.
PRO TIPS FOR YOUR COVID-19 MESSAGE
- Help People. Offer something that could be helpful, and do it at a cheaper price. And be sincere. One of my clients is a restaurant furniture manufacturer. Obviously, their client base is getting crushed. My client has a “furniture refurbish” service, and they offered it (at a deep discount) to restaurants who want to use this downtime to re-tool. And I made sure we added a tone of “look, we know most of you can’t do even this, but we want to offer help as best we can”. It’s a more humble message than “hey, take 20% off our stuff.”
- Don’t Be Clever. Look, I can joke around here in a blog, because you came to me to read this. But for the love of God, don’t try and be clever in e-mail messaging right now. The only exception here is if your company is already about jokes and fun. Rifftrax can tell joke or two. The time to be a little more lighthearted is perhaps coming, when we’re a month into this, but right now, on March 17th, no e-mail jokes allowed. We’re all a little numb.
- Give Info if Warranted. If you are a restaurant / store / service company, etc, then yes, by all means, give us info on hours, how you plan to stay open, will you do delivery, etc.
- Maybe Wait a Bit? Like I said above, it’s March 17th – just a week ago, things were relatively normal. And not only that, but we’re all getting e-mail from every business we’ve ever given our e-mail address to. Chill. Unless, of course, you’re that local restaurant, store, or service business – YOU I want to hear from. But Best Buy? Really, I don’t need your our people wash their hands so come on in e-mail. Because buying a TV right now is not on my mind. THAT’S the type of self-serving e-mail I was talking about earlier. I’d be much more receptive to “we’re giving away 50 TV’s to poor people stuck at home”.
Ok, that’s enough for tonight. Stay safe everyone. Gonna be a bit of a bumpy ride, but we’ll get through it. And support your local businesses – they need you more than ever.