· Do not worry about using a complete header but do list your carefully-worded descriptive subject line.
· Use an appropriate business greeting (salutation) and a colon.
· Use block form.
· Single-space within paragraphs.
· Double-space between paragraphs.
· Use 10-12 pt. font of a sans serif (without little feet) type such as calibri or arial.
· Keep your message to one page in a Word document. That should be equivalent to 1.5 screens in email.
· Write a complimentary closing.
· Use a professional email signature with full contact information (name, position, company, address, email address, phone number).
· Use descriptive section headings, as appropriate, to make section main ideas clear at a quick glance.
· Write an effective subject line that motivates readers to want to hear more.
· Write to the correct person in the scenario about the right topic and consider what that person’s attitude is toward your subject so you can use "you" attitude.
· Be clear about the purpose for writing the message early in the message, preferably the first paragraph.
· Assume the correct role in the scenario.
· Choose the appropriate approach: direct or indirect (usually direct).
· Balance emotional and logical appeals.
· Begin with an attention getting strategy.
· Consider what your three reasons are for why the person should support you.
· Ask yourself how you can provide more details.
· Decide what a reasonable action is that you will request of the recipient.
· Write an effective subject line that gives the purpose of the message.
· Write to the correct person in the scenario about the right topic and consider what that person’s attitude is toward your subject so you can use "you" attitude.
· Be clear about the purpose for writing the message early in the email, preferably the first paragraph and subject line.
· Assume the correct role in the scenario.
· Choose the appropriate approach: direct or indirect (usually indirect).
· Begin with a neutral or positive statement.
· Offer reasons for why you must deliver the bad news.
· Focus on the positives as much as possible.
· End with a focus on the positive in a way that also helps reader to know the decision is final, so they do not think they can complain and change it, but that also leaves them satisfied with your response.
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Persuasive Email Messages
Persuasive Scenario 1 (Always Urgent: Email Message Pleading Case for Hosting a Red Cross Blood Drive):
This morning as you drove to your job as food services manager at the Pechanga Casino Entertainment Center in Temecula, California, you were concerned to hear on the radio that the local Red Cross chapter put out a call for blood because national supplies have fallen dangerously low. During highly publicized disasters, people are emotional and eager to help out by donating blood. But in calmer times, only 5 percent of eligible donors think of giving blood. You're one of those few.
Not many people realize that donated blood lasts only 72 hours. Consequently, the mainstay of emergency blood supplies must be replenished in an ongoing effort. No one is more skilled, dedicated, or efficient in handling blood than the American Red Cross, which is responsible for half the nation's supply of blood and blood products.
Donated blood helps victims of accidents and disease as well as surgery patients. Just yesterday you were reading about a girl named Melissa, who was diagnosed with multiple congenital heart defects and underwent her first open-heart surgery at 1 week old. Now 5, she's used well over 50 units of donated blood, and she wouldn't be alive without them. In a thank-you letter, her mother lauded the many strangers who had "given a piece of themselves" to save her precious daughter—and countless others. You also learned that a don's pint of blood can benefit up to four other people.
Today, you're going to do more than just roll up your own sleeve. You know the local Red Cross chapter takes its Blood Mobile to corporations, restaurants, beauty salons—any place willing to host public blood drives. What if you could convince the board of directors to support a blood drive at the casino? The slot machines and gaming tables are usually full, hundreds of employees are on hand, and people who've never visited before might come down to donate blood. The positive publicity certainly couldn't hurt Pechanga's community image. With materials from the Red Cross, you're confident you can organize Pechanga's hosting effort and handle the promotion. (Last year, you headed the casino's successful Toys for Tots drive.)
To give blood, one must be healthy, be at least 17 years old (with no upper age limit), and weigh at least 110 pounds. Donors can give every 56 days. You'll be urging Pechanga donors to eat well, drink water, and be rested before the Blood Mobile arrives.
Write an email persuading the Pechanga board of directors to host a public Red Cross blood drive. You can learn more about what's involved in hosting a blood drive at www.givelife.org (click on "Sponsor a Drive"). Ask the board to provide bottled water, orange juice, and snacks for donors. You'll organize food service workers to handle the distribution, but you'll need the board's approval to let your team volunteer during work hours. Use a combination of logical and emotional appeals.
For this assignment you are human resources manager for Toby’s, a manufacturer of medium-priced women’s dresses, skirts, and blouses. You are going to have to persuade your labor force to follow safety rules more closely in their production work.
Over the past year, you have noticed that on-the-job injuries have increased – particularly ones involving the stitching assemblers. It appears that the assemblers have had numerous claims for emergency room treatment for injuries to their fingers and hands from the sewing machines. From one view, these injuries are increasing your insurance cost (you pay for the coverage under the garment workers’ union contract). From another, lost days by experienced workers mean less productivity. Thus, you decide to investigate the situation further.
Your informal investigation reveals the primary source of the problem. The union contract that you negotiate every three years stipulates that management take every precaution for worker safety. Federal law specifies that sewing machine needle guards (to prevent fingers from getting too close to stitching needles) must be installed on all machines. While the machines are safer this way, the workers cannot produce as many assembled garments. According to the time and motion studies conducted by your industrial engineers, output with the safety guards is restricted by about 15 percent. Thus, the workers remove the guards to make more money based on the piece-rate incentive program you use for compensation. The risk they take for more money is the chance of increased accidents.
You have alerted your supervisors to the problem. But the informal norms of making more money at any risk have overridden the supervisors’ formal efforts to keep the safety guards in place. Thus, you have decided to write a message to the entire union labor force at your company persuading them to follow the safety rules. In the long run, it will benefit everyone involved.
Think through the situation from the reader’s view and construct a persuasive reasoning approach suited to the audience. Then write the message. Your email message should be positive and friendly rather than belligerent and abusive. Use a combination of logical and emotional appeals.
A year ago you, the training director of Shehan-Welch Industries, got management approval to offer an extensive training program for employees. The program consisted of a variety of course offerings. For those whose basic knowledge of mathematics, English, and science is weak, courses were offered after work hours in the company training center. Qualified public school teachers were brought in to teach these courses. For those desiring college course work, Shehan-Welch offered to pay all costs for one course a semester at the local university. And for those merely wanting to study interesting and exciting topics, Shehan-Welch offered a variety of short courses at its training center. To date these have included ceramics, music appreciation, video editing, and interior decorating. Clearly, the plan had something for everyone.
In spite of your best efforts to promote the program, however, few have taken advantage of it. As you see it, the program has been a miserable failure.
Before writing off the program, you will make one last effort to increase participation. Up to this point, bulletin-board announcements and publicity on the company web portal have been the primary means of promoting the courses. Now you will send a persuasive email message to each worker.
In your email message, you will present your most persuasive arguments for taking advantage of the educational opportunities being offered. You will enclose a brochure describing the courses scheduled for the coming months and giving the details of the program. (You do not need to create this brochure, only reference it.)
If you need additional facts, you may supply them as long as they are consistent with the information given.
You work in a research center on your campus that has partnered with one of your center’s sponsors in a clothing drive. It is for the nonprofit Dress for Success program that helps women enter the workplace and stay there. One aspect of its work is providing business clothing for low-income women. These women need the suits when they go to interview for jobs, and they get a week’s worth of working clothes when they are hired.
While the organization relies on cash donations, volunteers, and in-kind donations, one of your center’s sponsors has asked you to help them collect in-kind donations of business clothing. They need new or nearly new suits (pants or skirts), blouses, shoes, and accessories. All items should be clean and stylish, and they should be turned in on hangers or in boxes. You’ll get the most current information from the Dress for Success website at < http://www.dressforsuccess.org >. Your job is to write a persuasive email message to send to all campus faculty and staff soliciting their donations of clothing that is appropriate to wear to work. Let them know when and where locally they can drop off their donations. Additionally, you’ll tell them where to find a donation bin on your campus. Volunteers will be on hand at all collection sites this week to accept their donations and give receipts for them.
Use your creativity and compose an email appeal that will generate lots of donations. You should also give the alternative of making a cash donation.
You are the director of volunteer services for a regional hospital. Most of your volunteers are retirees who work four-hour shifts one or two days a week providing various services, such as transporting patients to X-ray, delivering lab results to doctors' offices, and greeting visitors in reception areas. During the summers, many of your volunteers go on vacation, which leaves you with a lot of empty shifts to fill. During the directors' meeting, you suggest that the hospital create a summer student volunteer program to recruit high school and college students. The job would provide valuable experience to students interested in pursuing a medical career. However, several of the department heads expressed concern about whether the student volunteers would be mature enough or responsible enough to commit to unpaid summer work. You believe that requiring high GPAs, letters of recommendation, and interviews will help the hospital select mature and responsible students. The committee asks you to write an email message recommendation report outlining the idea in more detail. Write a persuasive email recommendation using the following outline:
· Propose a specific recommendation
· Identify the problem that needs solving
· Provide evidence that the problem is important.
· Describe alternate solutions and implications.
· Support your chosen recommendation with persuasive reasoning, stressing benefits.
· Address potential objections.
· Conclude by requesting action.
You are the head of the accounting department for a large company that hires student interns each summer. You have always requested two or three interns depending on the needs of your staff. In years past, the human resources (HR) department not only fulfilled your intern requests, but they were also able to send you students who were accounting majors. This year, however, HR announced that due to budget cuts, the internship pool will be reduced by half. You can request an intern—only one—but HR will assign interns only to selected departments, and they cannot guarantee your intern, if assigned, will actually be an accounting major. HR will determine the intern assignments based on justified requests from each department head. During a department meeting with your staff, you explain the situation and ask for their input. The group offers the following justifications:
1. The accounting department employs 15 full-time staff members. Your department is one of the smallest in the company, yet is responsible for critical operational and budgetary responsibilities upon which all other departments depend.
2. The company's fiscal year ends June 30, which means significant work is required in the summer months to generate year-end reports in addition to regular accounting operations.
3. Coincidentally, two employees in the accounting department will be out on maternity leave, one during May and June, and the other during June and July. These absences will further limit the department's ability to fulfill their end-of-year responsibilities.
Use the ACE process to write an email message to the members of the HR staffing committee requesting an intern (Accounting major, if possible) for your department. Do not simply repeat the points outlined above. Develop credibility, put the arguments in an effective order, supply evidence to support your arguments, and use techniques to motivate action.
Bad News Scenario 1 (Service Manager for IT Solutions):
You’re the service manager for IT Solutions, an on-call PC repair and trouble-shooting company. Today you received an email from Susan Patel, whose laptop your company recently serviced (see background info below). She does not want to pay the $510 bill for the service. Yes, Ray Stampe, the service person assigned to this job, did recover most of the files from the damaged hard drive, but Ms. Patel discovered after he left that the recovery was not complete. She is still missing some important customer and business information. Also, she complains that the internal and external drives that Ray provided were too expensive. She found out that she could have gotten these more cheaply online or at a PC center. She would like Ray to return, at no charge, to try to recover the missing files, and she wants you to match the price for the two drives that she would pay if ordering them online.
You discuss the situation with Ray and find out several important things. First, he had asked Ms. Patel before he left to check the recovered files, and she had told him that they looked fine. Also, he had asked her if she wanted the two drives immediately, and she had said yes. True, he hadn’t pointed out the prices to her, but he had certainly been willing to tell her had she asked. He did tell her that the drives were, in IT Solutions’ opinion, the most reliable on the market and that IT Solutions would guarantee them for three years, which is two years and nine months longer than she could get from any dealer unless she paid for the extra coverage.
All in all, you think that what you are charging is fair. Ray saved Ms. Patel a good bit of trouble and delay by providing the hardware on the spot, and it came with a great warranty. As for the unrecovered files, you doubt that there’s anything you can do, but you’d be willing to have one of your service people try again. But you won’t come to her house – at least not without a fee. She’ll need to bring the laptop in, and she may need to leave it for a day. Write her to let her know that this is the best you can do while also making her feel that she got fair treatment and a good deal overall.
Background Info for Scenario 1:
Ms. Patel is a CPA who runs her own one-person tax-consulting business out of her home, a set-up that enables her to be the primary caregiver for her kids. Her clients are private citizens who need help getting their annual income taxes filed. Essentially, she tells them what forms and documentation they need, they get all these together, and then she comes over with her laptop to prepare their taxes with them. The process usually takes only an hour or two, but at $100 an hour, she makes a decent income. Plus, once she serves a client, he or she tends to stay on with her year after year, so she has built up a nice amount of repeat business. It has all worked out quite well.
But there’s the occasional disaster, like the one that occurred last week. Ms. Patel’s laptop suddenly went on the blink. She could bring up nothing on the screen but programming code that she didn’t understand. She called IT Solutions to come trouble-shoot the problem, and the service person, Ray, discovered that her hard drive had gone bad. Yes, she’d kept backup files on an alternative second drive; however, to get to the backup files, she needed to access them from the main drive. Since the main drive stopped working, the backup files were inaccessible.
After several hours’ work, however, Ray managed to recover Ms. Patel’s customer information (names, addresses, and contact information, and dates serviced) and her business information (income, expenses, and so forth). She was quite relieved. He also put new internal and external hard drives in place. He was not sure of the pricing for the new hardware, so he said that he would send her a final bill once he got all the information he needed.
Two days later Ms. Patel received an itemized bill for $510. The service part of the bill came to $200 – which she would be happy to pay if she hadn’t discovered after Ray’s visit that in fact some of the customer records and financial records had become garbled or lost. She is missing key pieces of information on which her business depends. The equipment part of the bill shows that IT Solutions charged a considerably higher price for the internal and external hard drives than she could have gotten on the Internet or at a local computer center. In light of these facts, she does not feel that it is fair to pay the full amount of the bill – certainly not until her records are fully recovered.
To get a quick response, Ms. Patel emailed IT Solutions telling them of the problems and requesting a fair solution.
As Customer Service Supervisor at Billing Software, Inc., you need to send an email to your staff announcing a new policy affecting them. Specifically, the company is going to begin randomly monitoring its help-desk representatives’ telephone calls. This monitoring will give you a more dependable way to evaluate trainees, but the main reason for the new policy is that your people are spending too much time on the phone with callers. You routinely ask your clients – businesses that use your software for their billing procedures – to evaluate your services, and lately these evaluations have included some complaints about being put on hold too much and too long. There’s no good reason for the clogged phone lines; you have sufficient staff for the number of clients you have, your software is not that complicated, and all help-desk staff are thoroughly trained on the software. To find out the cause of the problem, you hung around the help-desk area more than usual over the last couple of weeks (often without being noticed), and you learned that your people often talk with clients too long and about matters not related to business. You discussed your findings with your boss, one of the owners of the company, and he agreed that it’s time to monitor service calls, as so many companies already do.
What makes the situation complex is that you do want your staff to continue to be cordial on the phone and generous with their time and information. Quality customer service is one edge you have over the competition, and you don’t want to do anything that will turn your helpful, friendly staff into impersonal automatons who don’t fully solve the caller’s problems. You also realize that an occasional off-topic discussion can relieve the tedium of answering calls all day. Still, staying too long on the phone with one caller can keep the next one from getting the help he or she needs in a timely fashion. And your company promotes efficiency as one of the main benefits of its software.
Write your staff an email that will help them receive the news of the policy as positively as possible so that you will get the reactions you want, not the ones you don’t.
The employees of ____ (you decide what company) have been making good use of one of your most attractive company benefits – namely, tuition reimbursement for college coursework. For courses approved by the company (that is, courses that are related to employees’ current or likely future positions in the company), employees have been paying only 33 percent of tuition costs. But this generous benefit is about to be cut back. The cost of tuition has risen dramatically nationwide (think of your own tuition bills, or check the Internet for facts about other schools). The costs of running a business keep rising, too, as energy bills increase, technology has to be updated, and health coverage takes bigger and bigger bites out of revenue. At a recent meeting, the executives of the company targeted tuition coverage as part of a general cost-cutting campaign. Your boss, the VP of human resources, has asked you to write an announcement to the employees regarding the tuition cutbacks.
In the message, you will need to state that the company will now cover only 40 percent of the tuition for approved courses. You know that this will be particularly bad news for those who are in the middle of a degree program, but there were never any guarantees that the coverage would remain at its current level, and the change simply can’t be helped. You will also inform the employees that there will be more rigorous screening of tuition-reimbursement requests. You should probably give examples of the kinds of courses that are likely to be approved under the new policy. On the other hand, at least some tuition coverage does remain, and – at least for now – none of the other benefits are being affected. Plus, online courses are often cheaper than those offered on-site, so maybe employees can find ways to offset the increased costs of taking courses.
Figure out how to write this email message so that you give employees a clear sense of the facts and their options. Help them feel positive about the company and encouraged to continue to seek out relevant college coursework – which, after all does save the company in-house training costs and results in a better qualified workforce.
Bad News Scenario 4 (English-Only Policy):
As your workplace is becoming more diverse in race, religion, and culture, you are beginning to realize that in order for employees to work together more effectively you are going to have to stress similarities rather than differences in all your business practices. And just as English has been a unifying aspect throughout United States history, as well as in the world of business, it should help unite your company’s staff as well. You believe an English-only policy would help improve the morale of those who speak only English while making all transactions transparent to everyone. And it would greatly improve the collaborations that go on daily in the workplace.
You know that courts have traditionally upheld English-only workplace policies because they are not seen as discriminatory. So write the email announcement of an English-only policy in a way that bilingual speakers will not find offensive.
Assume you manage a catering business. Two weeks ago, you met with Ellyn Jones to discuss the details of catering a reception for her parents' 50th wedding anniversary. The party is in another week. She indicated that her maximum catering budget for the party is $2500, and she signed a contract that outlined a price of $25 per person for up to 100 guests. The contract provided for several "finger-food" stations, including a sushi bar, crudités, hot hors d'oeuvres, and a large cake in addition to punch, tea, and coffee. You special order the sushi from an out-of-town supplier to be shipped in fresh just in time for the event. The rest of the items are available locally and can be prepared a day in advance. Today, Ellyn emails you with some bad news. Her mother decided most of the relatives won't like sushi and would like to replace that station with a chocolate fountain. Additionally, she would like t o increase the head count to 120. Your heart sinks when you read the message. With these changes, you will no longer be able to keep the price within Ellyn's budget. Not only will you have to pay a $200 cancellation fee if you cancel the sushi order, but renting the chocolate fountain and buying the chocolate, dipping foods, and skewers will cost $300 more than the sushi it is replacing. In addition, accommodating 20 additional guests will cost $500. These changes bring the cost of catering to $1000 over Ellyn's budget. How do you respond?
Your company has invited one of the biggest clients, Vince Embry, to be a keynote speaker at a company retreat. Vince has cancelled other engagements and arranged his calendar to accommodate your schedule. Vince also purchased an airline ticket at his own expense and has begun writing his speech. However, you've just learned that the company must cancel the retreat due to budget cuts. Create an email message to Vince communicating the bad news that the retreat Is cancelled so he will not have the opportunity speak. Consider what you can offer that will make up for his inconvenience and expense.
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