It's one thing to speak in terms your subscribers can understand, but it's something more to speak in terms they can truly appreciate. I often see messaging that's written from the company's point of view-speaking at subscribers rather than connecting with them. Sometimes it's impersonal corporate-speak, while other times it's IT-speak. Either way it's cold and doesn't create the best impression.

There's a very simply rule worth following: Anything customer-facing should be written by marketing.

With that rule in mind, here are a few instances where I've seen retailers slip into cold, impersonal corporate-speak:

1. Welcome emails. These are all about making a good first impression and setting expectations, so it's unfortunate that retailers often use dehumanizing language. For instance, American Eagle Outfitters greets new subscribers by saying, "Welcome to the AE mailing list!" I'm sure they read that and think to themselves, "Yippee! I've always wanted to be a name on a mailing list." I'm sorry, but no one gets excited about being on a mailing list.

There are better ways to spin it. For example, The Company Store's welcome email says, "Thank you for joining our email family!" Now that's considerably warmer than being welcomed to a list.

TigerDirect takes a slightly different angle and says, "Welcome to TigerDirect.com Preferred Group!" Being part of a special group is also infinitely better sounding than being part of a list.

2. Confirmation pages. Similar to welcome emails, confirmation pages often suffer from impersonal language. For instance, Coach's sign-up confirmation page has an illustration of some lovely abstract flowers and says, "Thank You. Your email address (you@you.com) has been successfully added to our email mailing list." Not only do we again get the job of being added to a list, but in this case the subscriber has been reduced to an email address.

3. "404 error" pages. Regrettably, I often encounter 404 error pages when clicking through from retailers' emails. While that in and of itself is a problem, retailers don't do themselves any favors by having boring default error pages. Zappos, Bluefly, Twitter and Technorati have all tried to make the most out of this bad situation by branding their 404 error pages and using humor and whimsy to try to dampen the frustration surely felt by customers.

I often compare administrative messaging and error messages to walking out the backdoor of a store into a dirty alley. There's no reason these kinds of pages and emails can't be on-brand. You should feel like you're still in the store, not in the back alley.

To get inspired and see just what is possible, check out this gallery of 404 error pages.

4. Whitelisting requests. Most whitelisting requests say something along the lines of "To ensure delivery to your inbox, please add me@me.com to your address book." However, a few weeks ago, when Overstock.com refreshed its email design, the wording was tweaked to say, "To ensure savings..." I think this is a great example of a company recasting a message to really appeal to customers' self-interests. While Overstock wants its emails delivered to subscribers' inboxes, subscribers are likely to see less value in that statement. However, who doesn't want to save money? That's a direct benefit that subscribers are likely to feel much more positively about.

Those are just a few areas where improvements can be made. If you've come across other areas where companies have fallen into corporate-speak, please comment below.