As e-mail becomes more and more prevalent in our day to day work I'm reminded more and more that everyone treats this tool differently, I've compiled a short list below of some of what I feel are the best tips or concepts to keep in mind when sending email, most are common sense but just writing this list helped remind me of some of the more important ones, enjoy the list, more to come next month. -
Don't send private messages with the company account. If you want to send personal messages from work (and you should probably try to minimize this), use a freebie account like Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo! if your office permits it. The content of your emails is less visible to employers through these accounts, so the private messages you send will stay private.
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Use BCC if necessary. If you must send a group email to people who do not know each other, don't add their addresses to the form's CC field; this is one method spammers use to harvest email addresses. Instead, use BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) for their addresses, and put your own email in the form's "to" field.
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Don't forward chain letters. Please don't do it. That includes the email that says that if you forward it to 10 people you'll win something, it's lying, please don't forward it to anyone else.
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Be professional. Ensure your work emails don't contain 'u', 'lol', 'ty', 'jk' and/or several million other texting / internet chat acronyms. These developed because cell phones' keypads aren't well-suited to writing fully-formed words, sentences and paragraphs. In business communications, however, they may give the impression of childishness and illiteracy.
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Be professional, part 2: Check tone. Be aware of the professional (or not) relationship between yourself and the recipient before starting an email. Use that to gauge what topics are appropriate to write or not, as well as the tone of your writing. This may be common sense to most, but you’d be surprised at how often the rule is ignored.
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Be careful. Email is not private; it can be intercepted anywhere en route to its recipient. In addition, it can live on for years in recipient email boxes, later to return to its sender in choice quotations. Think before sending email you will later regret.
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Cut down on signatures. Signature files, especially in business, should contain as few lines as possible. Four lines is a figure generally agreed-upon. Email that consists of a two-line statement and a ten-line signature will have its recipients rolling their eyes.
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May I quote you? When you respond to an email, the original email is quoted. Cut the most relevant sentence from the message to which you are responding, preface it with a '>' (if it's not already there) and paste the quote above your response. Delete the rest of the original email from your response, unless you are responding to other points in the original.
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Don't use email when you are angry. While most of the time email does not convey your emotions, particularly humour, it somehow seems to transmit anger - even when you don’t intend it to come through.
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Get clarification. If someone sends you an email that upsets you, make sure you haven't misunderstood. As mentioned previously, emotion and tone do not always carry over well in email. Instead of responding angrily, in your response, quote the portion of text that you are unsure of and ask the sender to clarify. Indicate what you think it means, if you like, then ask if you've misunderstood.
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Don't Spam friends. Occasionally, mail servers go on the fritz and send forty-five copies of the same email to the recipient. Even if it's not your fault, it is polite to apologize profusely to your friend, family, or business colleagues.
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Consider the quirks of other email systems. For example, say that you have a friend with a Hotmail account and want to send a list of hyperlinks. Hotmail doesn't handle hyperlinks inside of an email very well. For example, you cannot easily copy the actual URL, without a bit of effort. It's hard to know about all types of email systems, but some awareness reduces frustrating situations for recipients.
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Respond to group email appropriately. If someone has sent a group email that requires a response, but only to the sender or a couple of parties, don't copy everyone on your reply.
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Don't respond to every group email. More specifically, it is alright to sit out a thread of group conversation if you are not being addressed directly. However, read the emails carefully to make sure that you are not being expected to respond.
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Respect email laws and regulations. Some countries have very specific rules about bulk emailing. If you use email to promote your business, you need to know the laws for not only your country but probably wherever you are emailing to. It's a tall order, given the global village of the Internet, but its importance cannot be overstated.
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Use meaningful subject lines. Write something "meaningful" in the subject line, to give recipients a clue as to what your email is about. This is increasingly necessary to distinguish legit emails from spam. The latter's subject lines are often deceptive.
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Be brief. Do not send excessively long emails if at all possible. Try to summarize your information so that your recipients are more likely to read the email and actually respond. When possible, break long emails into numbered point form so that recipients can respond by reference number.
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Summarize. Precede a long email with a short summary.
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Use 'Reply All' only when necessary. Usually, the common advice is to not use "reply all" if other recipients of a group email do not need your response. But forgetting to use "reply all" when appropriate is simply inefficient. If the vast majority of a group needs to hear a message, writing in individual emails addresses will waste your time and increase the chances that you’re going to leave someone important out of the email.
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If it's urgent, say so. Writing 'URGENT' in front of your email's subject will make it stand out from the crowd, and most likely get timely attention from the recipient. Make certain it is urgent, however; remember how much attention was paid to the boy who cried wolf when his cries really mattered.
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Use smileys. If you think that something you've written might be misunderstood in tone or emotion, use the appropriate smiley. It should be obvious, but this tip does not apply to work or other professional emails, or if the person doesn't know you already.
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Proofread. There is a difference between typos and poor writing. Poor writing improves with practice. Typos stay typos unless you take the time to eliminate them. If you are applying for a job or freelance gig, it's especially important to prufreed before you send that email. And as if you needed another reason to be concise, remember that the chance of typos is directly proportional to the length of your email.
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Remember the telephone. Unless you need a written record of a given communication (or if the person you're communicating with is long distance), consider calling (or sending a letter to) your intended recipient instead of an email. People often default to writing an email because it is quick and easy; but sometimes a handwritten letter or phone call can provide the personal touch your communication really needs.
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On Holidays? Taking some person time for the Holiday Season? If you will be out of your office or just not checking your email for a lengthy period of time, set up an auto responder to inform whomever emails you of your absence, your expected return and who they can contact while you are away. This is polite (the message is only sent to a given email once), and it prevents a lot of "I'm waiting for your response" emails. A quick warning, however, to not use an auto responder for your home email; you shouldn't advertise an empty house.
Above all else remember that email is just one option in the various forms of communication we use in our small business every day, it's easy to get caught up in the "I'll just email them" trap, communication is key so pick up the phone or sit down and have coffee to talk about business with friends and colleagues!
As always Your small business technology is our specialty and we're here to help so email or better yet, pickup the phone today with any questions you have about email security, etiquette or privacy, we'd be glad to help!
Office: 905-366-8234
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