Email and Selling to Women - The ConsumHERist

Posted on | November 13, 2008 |

by Delia Passi

I have mixed feelings about the use of email. On one hand it can take me seemingly forever to compose a fairly simple message to someone when I can convey the same thoughts over the phone or in person quite quickly. Unfortunately when I get started talking with someone I tend to cover a lot of ground over and above the simple message in an email, and I probably spend the same amount of time in the end.

Of course email is something I can do out of sync with the receiving party, sending a message late or early in the day when a direct personal contact is inconvenient or inappropriate, not to mention that I can send the same info by email to multiple people. And email leaves a record of the message, whereas personal communications do not. There are times when only one-way communications is needed or wanted, and email is also clearly preferable.

But what is the better means when trying to persuade someone? (We’re talking selling here.) PsyBlog, one of my favorite sites regarding psychology, discusses a study regarding the effectiveness of “a persuasive communication” (That’s a sales pitch to you and me.). The study measured the effectiveness in terms of the “oneness”, between the parties, and analyzed the gender differences.

When women share a sense of connection with each other then a face-to-face pitch is more persuasive than electronic means, whereas it is less effective with men, who become more competitive in face-to-face circumstances. The study didn’t address two other factors that I’d like to understand. For one, it didn’t specifically measure effectiveness in mixed gender situations, but suggested email communications any time the relationship is competitive, and face-to-face when it is cooperative.

Another condition that was not tested was when the communications is over the telephone, when I suspect the effectiveness more closely resembles face-to-face effectiveness since the interaction is still very personal.

So, when I’m trying to persuade my long time client, and friend, to summon up the budget to hire me for extensive consulting engagements, I should go see her. And when I’m trying to get my daughter to reconsider her dating choices I should do it by email?

Delia Passi, Founder of WomenCertifiedÂ® and author of Winning the Toughest Customer: The Essential Guide to Selling to Women is a regular columnist on eBrandMarketing.