Greetings!

The Good news about Gold emails is that they are usually complete, clear, and correct - the 3 C's!!!

The Bad news is that they tend to be too complete, overly clear, and correct to the point of seeming anal.

Take my Gold friend Jim, for example. His Subject Line was "ALERT: Required System Shutdown"

The body of text was in LARGE TYPE with MULTIPLE COLORS, and with some combinations of BOLD print with expressive EMOTICONS for emphasis.

Without scrolling down, you read the following:

• SAVE ALL FILES BEFORE THE SHUTDOWN
• PLAN FOR A 6-HOUR BREAK FROM COMPUTERS
• SCHEDULE ALTERNATIVE WORK STATIONS IF YOU NEED A COMPUTER
• YOUR COOPERATION WILL GUARANTEE A SUCCESSFUL UPGRADE TO ALL COMPUTERS

So far so good right?

Not at all. Here's what happened. On the date of the shutdown, only 3 computers were shut down out of a total 120 computers in the building. How devastating that must have been to poor Jim.

So why was this a failure? Yes, the email was COMPLETE, CLEAR, AND CORRECT, but one had to SCROLL DOWN to read the most important information like the DATE and the TIME. 

All people of ALL FOUR COLORS needed to see the date in both the SUBJECT LINE and in the FIRST SCREEN with no need to scroll. People today do not like scrolling and, if they are reading on a mobile phone, the odds are even slimmer that a person will bother to scroll.

Let's break it down by Color.

GOLD and ORANGE people want to see the what, who, where, when, and how stuff RIGHT UP FRONT. The Golds are the most likely to scroll down after that, but you can bet the Oranges will probably not.

GREEN people want the WHY and HOW information because their time is valuable and they tend to treasure a resource like a computer more than the other Colors. You can opt to give Greens the WHY and HOW by way of an attachment.

BLUE folks want to know who to call if there is a problem -- and the more personal the offer the better. If an open discussion will help, the Blues are more likely to attend such an event.

For ultimate customer service, you might offer a link that automatically gives them a reminder the day before.

Isn't it funny that our best efforts and best intentions go unappreciated just because we are who we are, and they are who they are. :)

On Halloween this year,The Arizona Republic urged readers to attend An Epitaph Party where you secretly entered your future epitaph onto a list. Later people would have to guess whose epitaph it was. 

Below find actual epitaphs of celebrities. They are playfully grouped by temperament (Color) -- although the Color does not necessarily represent the temperament of the celebrity. Try to guess who said what on their tombstones. The Key is at the end.