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Last week, we wrote about the art of the elevator pitch , that short and hopefully impactful speech one should be prepared to give. But face-to-face interactions aren't always possible, and even though they may be preferable, it's important to practice the written form of the pitch as well. Investors (and tech bloggers, I would add) are inundated with emails. As with an elevator speech, you need to craft your email to attract and hold your reader's attention. Here are a few tips. Sponsor 1. The subject line matters. Don't leave this blank, and don't write something vague like "introduction" or "pitch" or "idea" in the subject line. At least include your company name, but better yet include something that makes the email seem interesting to read. 2. Introduce yourself. Personalized emails go a lot farther than those sent from the marketing department. While attachments like resumes and press releases are sometimes appropriate, you should give a quick introduction to yourself at the beginning of an email. Your introduction should include the key details: who you are and why the recipient should know you. 3. Know your audience. Demonstrate some evidence in your email that you know who the recipient is. Make sure you are targeting the right person with the right message. 4. Pictures say a thousand words. If possible, include images and videos. These can help the recipient quickly assess your product or service. Be respectful of file size limitations. 5. Make it easy to reach you. Every email should contain a signature. And every signature should include all the possible ways to reach you: phone number, email address, Twitter account, Skype name, and so on. You need to be a click away. 6. Make it happen. Don't just send emails with vague discussion about potential follow-up. Propose a follow-up. Arrange a meeting time and place. As with the elevator speech, it is important to be yourself. Remember to be respectful, even though the interaction isn't "in person." Discuss
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The Art of the Email Pitch
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Fliptop , a new content subscription service, is one of several companies presenting at this week's DEMO conference in Palm Springs. Among a large group of startups, this was one of the first to catch my eye, making me think "wow, I need that!" In short, what Fliptop offers is a simple way to subscribe to a website's content. But unlike traditional RSS feeds, which just offer a direct feed which must be added to an RSS reader like Google Reader or FeedDemon , Fliptop's service provides more features, like the option to filter content by keyword, follow only select topics or categories and the ability to receive email digests of the just content you're interested in. Sponsor For Web Publishers The Fliptop service is available in two formats - one designed for website publishers and another designed for web surfers . The first provides an embeddable button that publishers can add to their site. When clicked, this button prompts the user as to which topics they want to follow. A sports site could set it up so fans could just check boxes next to their favorite team names, for instance. Another option below the checkboxes lets you further refine the content you choose by keyword filters. So, here on ReadWriteWeb.com , for example, you could follow news about "mobile, real-time web, apple" etc. (Keywords are separated by commas). After picking your options, you click "Next" and then choose how you want to be alerted - either via a traditional RSS feed or by email, Twitter, Facebook, or SMS text. If choosing the email option, you can even configure how often you want to be alerted - once per day, once a week or immediately. For Consumers However, you don't have to rely on publishers to begin using Fliptop before you can try it. A browser bookmarklet is available which lets you drag-and-drop a Fliptop button to your web browser's bookmarks. Click the new "Subscribe" button it creates when you're on any page that has an RSS feed (look for the orange icon in the address bar of your browser). When clicked, you can configure how you want to follow that site. At the moment, your only options here are email or RSS. The service is simple, incredibly easy to use and useful for anyone who feels overwhelmed by their news feeds. (Gadget blog readers, rejoice! This product is perfect for you!). The only downside to the service as it stands right now is that it requires you to fill out CAPTCHAs when signing up. These spam blocking tools force you to type in the blurry words you see into a text box before confirming your subscription. And if requesting an email subscription, you then have to click yet another confirmation sent to you via email to assure Fliptop that you really did want to subscribe. We appreciate that the company is looking out for us, but two confirmations is at least one too many for what should be a speedier service, in our opinion. Will Fliptop Make Website Subscriptions More Mainstream? The real question now is whether something like Fliptop will encourage more people to follow a website's content via an automated mechanism, be it a customized, filtered RSS feed or an email digest. The idea of subscribing to a website directly via an RSS feed is one that, for whatever reason, never quite caught on with the general public. However, those same folks probably use RSS without even knowing it - like when they follow their favorite blog on Facebook, for example. The updates they track there are, in most cases, automated via RSS technology. Fliptop could potentially reach these same sort of non-technical users too, thanks to its simple terminology (publisher buttons say "follow" not "subscribe"), a clean layout and easily understandable filtering options. Now it's just a matter of waiting to see if any web publishers pick this up and place it on their site. Discuss
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Fliptop Makes RSS Easy, More Configurable
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Sony just announced that it is expanding its selection of newspapers and magazines in its e-book store. Starting today, users of Sony's e-readers will be able to subscribe to 20 new newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Boston Globe, San Jose Mercury News, PC Magazine and Foreign Affairs. With the newspaper business in turmoil, it only makes sense for these papers to try to get a better foothold on more devices. Sponsor eInk vs. LCDs For users who don't own an e-reader yet but are looking into getting one, the question right now is to either wait for the iPad and go with a regular LCD screen for reading books, or to choose a more traditional (and cheaper) e-reader like the Kindle or Sony Reader that feature electronic ink. While some users don't mind the blacklit LCD screens of their phones to read, others can't fathom reading any long-form content on these screens. Fighting Off the iPad For Sony, Amazon, B&N and others who are currently betting on electronic ink for their devices, one of the best ways to distinguish themselves from Apple is to offer more content over their free wireless connections and to play up the advantages of eInk. In this context, adding a newspaper like the New York Times (which is also a favorite of Steve Jobs and features heavily in Apple's iPad ads and other promotional material ) makes a lot of sense. For the newspapers, getting on more devices and selling more subscriptions is simply good business. Sony charges up to $14.99 per month for these subscriptions. Given that all of these papers could sell their own apps and subscriptions on the iPad as well - and that some of them will be available for free - the availability of newspapers may not be a deciding factor for a lot of potential iPad and e-reader buyers. Hopefully, however, we will also see a lot of innovative newspaper and magazine apps on the iPad. Chances are that these new apps will make today's traditional e-readers seem rather quaint in comparison. The availability of these apps could easily sway a lot of potential e-reader buyers to get an iPad instead. What is your experience? Do you think e-books and newspapers just look better on eInk? Or are you waiting for the innovative newspaper apps on the iPad that will include video and other interactive content? Discuss
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Sony Brings More Newspaper and Magazine Content to its E-Readers
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According to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project , 61% of Americans now get some of their news online, though local TV stations are still the most popular means of finding out about the news. Local print newspapers still reach 50% of Americans and 17% read the print versions of national papers like the New York Times or USA Today. While 38% of Americans still rely solely on offline sources for their daily news, only 2% of adults in the U.S. get their news exclusively from online sources. Sponsor The majority of news consumers in the U.S. (59%) now get their news from a combination of online and offline sources. News Portals Are the Most Popular Sources - Younger Internet Users also Rely on Social Networks When online, American Internet users generally rely on 2 to 5 different sites to get their news. Interestingly, 65% of online news users say that they don't have a favorite online news source. The majority of Internet users (56%) rely on news portals like Google News , AOL or Topix. Younger Internet users under 29 also tend to use social networks to look for interesting stories that their peers share with them (44%) and 13% specifically follow news organizations or individual journalists on social networking sites. Only 4% of all Internet users follow Twitter updates from journalists and news organizations to stay on top of the news. News podcasts are far more popular than Twitter for getting news updates. About 15% of online news users over 18 listen to news podcasts from organizations like NPR or the New York Times. What About RSS? Sadly, the Pew study did not ask users if they used RSS feeds and feed readers to consume news ("RSS" doesn't even appear in the report). While a lot of Internet users probably use RSS to consume news on portal sites and news aggregators without knowing it, it would be interesting to see how many people use services like Google Reader to consume news. Sharing News Three-quarters of all adult Internet users in the U.S. say that they get news forwarded to them by email or through posts on social networking sites. A quarter of these Internet users, however, also says that they barely ever read these stories. Demographics Marketers and the advertising departments for online news sources will be happy to hear that news users tend to be younger than the average population (68% are under 50 and 29% are under 30) and are likely to be employed full-time (50%) and have at least some college education (67%). Their household income also tends to be higher than the U.S. average. These users are also have faster broadband connections (84%) than the average Internet user. The heaviest consumers of online news are between 30 and 49 years old and likely to live in a household with an annual income of over $50,000. What do they look for? The vast majority of Internet users goes online to find out information about the weather (81%). News about national events (73%), health (66%), business and finance (64%) and news about international events (62%) are also among the top 5 most popular categories among online news consumers . Tech news is the sixth-most popular category. Get RWW News on Facebook You can become a fan of ReadWriteWeb on Facebook and get our news and analysis about the changing web delivered directly into your News feed. Discuss
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Study: Only 2% of U.S. Adults Rely Exclusively on Internet for Getting News
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weather
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ReadItLater , the company behind the web browser add-ons and mobile applications that let busy web surfers mark articles for later reading, has just released a new service that will make it easier for you to finally catch up on your saved items. Before, as you browsed the web (either via desktop or mobile), you could use ReadItLater to accumulate a list of items you didn't have the time for at the moment. This was especially helpful for when you came across longer, thought-provoking articles - the kind you really wanted to sink your teeth into by devouring them word-for-word. Unfortunately, the ability to quickly tap a button to add something to your reading list was so easy - perhaps too easy - that users ended up with long, unwieldy lists of saved content. Now ReadItLater is introducing a new Digest feature which helps you get caught up by automatically sorting and organizing articles for you. Sponsor Digest: Imposing Order on the Chaos of Unread Items ReadItLater's creator Nate Weiner calls the new Digest "Read It Later with a brain." Instead of being presented with a simple list of headlines as you were before, the Digest organizes all your articles and groups them into topics. Its layout is somewhat reminiscent of Feedly , the popular start page made up of your Google Reader RSS feeds and Twitter posts. Like Feedly, which organizes topics by Google Reader folder names and tags, the Digest also employs a categorization system of sorts. The difference is, in ReadItLater's case, that filtering and organization is performed automatically with no extra effort required on your part.
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