Do you find yourself sending business mails late at night? You may want to reconsider your email habits after reading my latest Leadership Magazine contribution on page 92.
To emoticon or not to emoticon...
You’ve
really built a solid relationship with your client, supplier, employee [insert
key stakeholder that forms part of your business here], they have become one of
your closest confidants, so there is no harm in ending off your e-mail with
some hugs and kisses at the end of it; not to mention the array of emoticons at
our disposal to really express yourselves in a written message! Right? When it
comes to business e-mail protocols this is a big no, no. Regardless of how
close you are with your business contacts, keep it professional.
E-mail
etiquette could prevent awkward misinterpretations of e-mails, not avoiding
common mistakes could have a detrimental impact on you and your company’s
reputation.
Sending
e-mails have become such an integral part of our daily lives that we very often
dart off an e-mail without actually considering what we’re sending to whom. Here
are a couple of e-mail etiquette tips to be considered:
Timing – Until about a year
ago I quite happily sent e-mails late at night, or super early in the morning.
I also checked mails just before putting off the bedside lamp for the evening and
felt rather proud of myself for being so on the ball with my quick response
rate. I stopped checking mail before going to bed when I received really bad personal
news via an e-mail one evening. There was nothing that I could do about the situation;
however I had a really bad night’s rest, which then meant I was not on my A-game
the next day. What sealed the deal for me was receiving an incredibly unpleasant
e-mail sent at about one o’clock in the morning, which was clearly sent by
someone who was overtired. This made me realise that sending out e-mails late
at night, or in the wee hours of the morning sends many negative messages. I am
not convinced that anyone is productive after 19:00 at night after a long day
in the office, let alone after twelve at night. It is important to have a
balance in your life and use office hours to conduct business. My team and I
now have a rule that we don’t sent e-mails after 19:00 at night or before 07:00
in the morning, we respect each other times, and those that we are sending
mails to.
Check your spelling and grammar –
spelling and grammar gremlins happen, however many of them could have been
avoided with a quick ‘once over’ before the mail was sent. In the last week I
received two e-mails from totally different people, who have fairly senior
positions in their respective organisations. The emails were riddled with
spelling and grammar mistakes. This definitely dented my perception of them.
Respect the person that you are sending an email to by re-reading it before
sending it; the recipient may not necessarily have the time or inclination to
unscramble your incoherent sentence structure.
Length – steer away from very
lengthy e-mails. There will be times that you may need to write longer e-mails,
especially when confirming details and the e-mail will be used to keep an audit
trail of a conversation or project. However, more often than not, the content
of an email can be reduced significantly. When an e-mail is too long, it takes
time to read through it and to respond to it, which then causes other emails to
heap up and before you know it you have a cluttered Inbox. Cut to the chase, let the recipient know
exactly what you need from them and by when, this will also help them to
prioritise accordingly.
Subject lines –
it really helps if you can provide as much detail of what the email is about in
the subject line. This will also allow the recipient of the mail to know whether
it is urgent and requires a response immediately or if reading it can wait
until later in the day. We’ve started implementing [eom] and [nntr] in our
subject lines for internal mails. We try as far as possible to reduce our
emails to a couple of words in the subject line; eom denotes that it is the
‘end of message’, then the other person knows that they don’t need to open the
email. Ending with [nntr] means that there is ‘no need to respond.’ Very often
we feel compelled to respond to every single mail, which also clogs up Inbox
space.
CC carefully – sometimes
we feel it necessary to copy numerous people into a mail for various reasons.
If you are copying someone in for their reference, or to be aware what’s going
on, let them know; if you’re going to CC 20 people into a mail, and each one of
them want to reply or acknowledge your mail then you’re going to have a pretty
full Inbox. Also there is the problem that crops up when people accidentally hit
the ‘reply all’ button, then all and sundry will get see all the replies. Again
this overloads your Inbox unnecessarily.
Add the recipients last and
make sure that it is addressed to the correct people. Few things are as
cringe-worthy as accidentally sending an e-mail to the wrong recipient and
knowing that there is just no way of retrieving it. By adding the recipients
last you have a chance to go over the content of the mail, grammar and spelling
one last time before hitting the send button.
Turn your emails around quickly - our
American ECCO partner prides themselves in a three-hour turnaround time on
e-mails. Realistically, I think 24 hours is good, and this is what we aim for.
Reading through the email etiquette literature, it says that you should reply
to all emails that you have been sent. Even if you are only copied in it, or if
the email was not intended for you, you should reply and indicate that the mail
was sent to you in error. Also, know when to draw the line to replying;
acknowledge the mail but avoid then a to and fro of “great” and “thank you”
mails. The important part is to reply to emails. Instead of checking mail
throughout the day, what I’ve found works quite well is to allocate specific
timeslots to checking email. This increases your productivity for getting down
to doing actual work and avoiding distractions.
Make it easy for people to find your contact details
– especially if the thread of the mail is getting quite long, it’s incredibly
frustrating to trawl through the whole mail to try and track down a contact
number.
- Avoid sending emails after 19:00 or
before 07:00;
- Check your grammar and spelling
before sending an e-mail;
- Avoid lengthy e-mails, get to the
crux of your message quickly and let the recipient know what you require
them to do by when;
- Creatively use subject lines to
save time;
- Carefully
consider who needs to be CC’d into an email and make sure that you are
sending the mail to the right person;
- Acknowledge
all the e-mails that you receive;
- Make
it easy for people to find your contact details.
To
continue the reputation management conversation, join Regine on Twitter
@ReputationIsKey or Facebook www.facebook.com/yourreputationmatters.
Do
you have a reputation management question? Ask the specialist – send your
question through to Regine and it may be answered in the next edition: regine@reputationmatters.co.za.
http://www.businessinsider.com/email-etiquette-rules-every-professional-needs-to-know-2016-1
http://emailcharter.org/
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