Whether you are in IT, Customer Service, Operations or Sales, you are also in Marketing. In today’s fast paced world, it takes creativity and out-of-the box thinking to get noticed and stand out in the mind of your consumers, stakeholders, and in large organizations, even your boss and your peers.
As IT and Information Security professionals, the focus on personal branding has never been more critical than it is today. As leaders, you understand the need to create, enhance and develop your personal brand, as well as proactively market yourself and your company to stay on top and develop your successful career. After all, without your customers, business units and boss, you have no career.
I recently received a creative OOO (Out Of Office) reply from a recognized emerging technology leader and innovator, Fred Steube, that inspired me to share this ingenious idea. Why not have your autoreply work for you while you are away? It doesn’t matter whether you are on vacation, attending an event or travelling for work, you can be creatively marketing yourself and your company with your OOO autoreply.
Here are a few quick tips on creating an OOO response that will work for you.
- Be Strategic: You can create different messages for Internal Marketing (Those within your organization) and External Marketing (Customers, stakeholders, vendors, etc.), so be strategic in your approach to each and think of the messages you want to leave your emailers with when they receive your auto response.
- Entertain, Inspire or Educate: Your message should either use humor or wonder to entertain your reader, inspire with a quote or idea or challenge or educate with information about your company, division or personal brand in order to be memorable and make an impact.
- Be Authentic: Never forget that this message is coming from you. It may be tempting to copy and paste a great OOO reply from a peer or colleague, but that ultimately detracts from your brand if it’s not in your voice. Find a style that works for you and own it.
I’ll leave you with a fun example of the recent creative OOO auto-response I recently received for inspiration. Now go ahead, enjoy your vacation, and know that your OOO is working for you and your brand while you are sipping Pina Coladas with your toes in the sand!
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From: Fred Steube @Steube #Steube
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2014 5:46 PM
To: Christa Pusateri
Subject: Automatic reply: Hope to see you at the TBTF Tech Jam- August 28!
Hello – I’m currently unresponsive because I am traveling to the majestic, scenic Lake Tahoe area for the Mobile Insider Summit conference. I have incredibly easy access to a phone and email, but I will be head’s down speaking at the conference and learning about geeky mobile tech and strategy. If this is an emergency, please call 911. I will be back at my company-assigned workstation space on Fri, Aug 22.
Please be patient with me for not getting back to you immediately. While you wait, you could:
1) Watch our Valpak demo video showing the current Augmented Reality (AR) experience of scanning the envelope and seeing the 3D video:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/illl01a5jqzxija/VR%20Corrected.mov
2) Watch Microsoft’s futuristic concept of what 2019 will look like: http://tinyurl.com/85ymfol
3) Watch Corning’s futuristic video: “A Day Made of Glass Montage (90-second – 2013)”: http://tinyurl.com/ns6ozhx
4) Watch a radical, and insane video free climbers (no ropes!) “Of Man and Beast = The Free Solo Climbers”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrX0ohmu1zw
5) Please visit our great savings sites and apps. Go save some big $ bucks during the holidays:
Thank you,
Fred Steube
Senior Director, Emerging Technology
Cox Target Media – Valpak & Savings.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/steube
Want more? Here are some additional resources for fun and creative OOO replies:
- http://mashable.com/2014/07/02/out-of-office-funny-emails/
- http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hilarious-out-of-office-email-auto-replies
- http://positivesharing.com/2011/07/out-of-office/
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