In the world of online business, email is the medium with the greatest potential for one-to-one communication.

The trouble is, this potential is rarely exploited.

All too often, emails to our customers and prospects are written in a hurry, without much thought given to making a personal connection with the reader and building a lasting relationship.

Why companies pay so little attention to email is a mystery to me.

Time and again the emails I receive from companies have clearly been written without any effort being to connect with me as an individual.

This lost opportunity is most evident when I provide my email address to a company for the very first time. Maybe I sign up for a newsletter, maybe I register for some kind of service, maybe I buy a product.

Almost without exception, the automated emails I receive to confirm the action I have just taken are uniformly drab and impersonal.

This is craziness.

When a customer first gives you his or her email address, you have a small window of opportunity. Customers are expecting a confirmation email from you. They are waiting for it. And when it arrives, almost 100% of people will open it.

In other words, this is your first and best chance to make a great impression.

Do you or your company take full advantage of that opportunity?

Here are three things you can do to give some "personal power" to any email communication.

1. Declare your humanity: Write as an individual, not as a corporation

People don't want to hear from your computer system. They want to hear from you.

So include some elements in your email that are one-to-one—from one human being to another.

That doesn't mean that you should write in some insincere "you're my new best buddy" tone or style. It's just a matter of finding a way to connect in a way that is genuinely human.

Here's an example of a single sentence used in a welcome email that I received recently after I signed up for an e-newsletter.