Email manners are a necessity. There is huge risk of being misunderstood when you write emails, as there is no intonation or body language involved.
That is, if they even receive your message. If you’re not careful your emails can be flagged as spam, filtered out, redirected or deleted.
The fact that it is written communication can also come back to haunt you. If it is an important email regarding a situation where much is at stake, don’t send it at all – yet. Wait a day or so, and see if what you were typing yesterday is still worth sending today.
A few email tips:
1. Email is rather emotionless. The use of typed emoticons such as the smiley 🙂 can help a little bit, but not everybody knows what they mean – so there is certainly a risk involved in using them. LOL! (this means: laughing out loud :o) Do not use ALL CAPITALS, as that is perceived as online shouting, as is excessive bolding or overused punctuation!!! If you try to emphasize everything, you will lose all emphasis.
2. Always use a subject line – preferably a relevant one.
3. Keep emails short and sweet – but not too short. Try to include the original email in your reply, especially if your reply is not within 24 hours.
4. Are you replying to one person, or a whole group? Be careful; better double check the “to” field before hitting the “submit” button. You do not want to say something personal, assuming that only one person is reading it, but instead accidentally click “reply to all”, and share private thoughts with a large group of readers.
5. Protect other people’s privacy. If you are sending an email to several people at once, consider sending this email to yourself with the recipients on BCC (blind carbon copy). This way the recipients can not see the email addresses of all the other people, and people cannot “reply all.”
6. Be selective in the use of reply to all. Do all original recipients of the email also need to be notified of your answer? Maybe a reply just to the original sender will suffice. People’s inboxes are full enough as it is.
7. Consider adding a “signature” to your emails, incuding your name, company name and phone number, possibly also your website address and a tagline.
8. Keep file attachments as small as possible. Not everybody, and especially not in rural regions, may have the same speedy connection as you. Contact the addressee beforehand if you have to send something large – they may not appreciate their computer being held hostage while downloading photos.
