Foot(er)ing the bill

Tue, Sep 16, 2008

I’ve just had an email from a professional firm about some work I want them to do. The email breaks down as follows:

• 1 line of greeting
• 5 lines of content
• 2 lines of sign-off
• 5 lines of personal signature (position, phone number)
• 7 lines of company details (address, companies house info)
• 3 lines of partners names and company phone number
• 7 lines of legal disclaimer
• 9 lines explaining how to read the attached PDF document
• 7 lines of advertising pointing at their website
• 24 lines of spacing and padding, half of which are unnecessary

So, of 70 lines of text, 10 (14%) are directly related to the content of the mail I sent. The remainder are pointless, unnecessary or spam. Not a good ratio.