Technology Evangelist

Email has established itself as the business communications vehicle of choice due to its speed and efficiency. However, if not used properly it can drain the efficiency out of the workplace that it was meant to create. In many cases, email efficiency correlates with proper email etiquette, where considerate emailing habits are rewarding both in terms of goodwill and productivity. By evangelizing the following email etiquette tips, I hope to make business communications twice as efficient as they are today. Is that too much to ask?

Top five email etiquette tips:

Subject lines that don't match the message: For anyone receiving more than a few emails a day, subject lines become a critical factor for prioritizing email work flow. They're also the key to finding past emails when sorting by subject line. Tip: Write your message first, then write the subject.
Subject lines that don't match the message #2: Have you ever found yourself in the middle of an extended group email conversation where the topic of the emails changed, but the subject lines did not? This is a tremendous productivity killer because it forces everyone receiving the emails to read emails that are no longer relevant to them. Tip: If you click Reply All, update the subject line and verify that the recipient list is still relevant to the email's topic.
Replying with embedded images: Occasionally, something large needs to be sent via email such as a screen shot of a web site. If it helps explain your point, it's clearly smart to do so. However, when person after person replies to the entire group with the same embedded image in the message thread, things start to get out of control. Tip: If an email includes images or attachments that are no longer relevant to the discussion, purge them from your email before replying.
Heavily Formatted Signature Files: When you send an email, you are in effect storing information on the recipient's computer. Do you really think they're interested in using their hard drive to store your colorful email signature? Tip: Just tell them who you are. Name and contact information in plain text does the trick. Anything beyond that is wasteful.
Multi-Topic Emails: Email inboxes are commonly used as to-do lists. This is done by marking emails as unread, or flagging emails for follow-up that include pending tasks. This is becomes less efficient in emails containing lists of tasks because the entire list needs to be continually reviewed until the last issue is finally resolved. Tip: Make life easier the people on the receiving end of your assignments by sending tasks in multiple emails than one.

Please join my crusade for email efficiency by passing this list along to your coworkers, friends, and family. Together, we can make the email world a better place for all.

I'm not naming any names. Let's just say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

#6 Do not use e-mail wall paper. This stuff (which is basically an embedded image, see #3) causes the e-mail to download slowly, makes text hard to read and takes up space. Junk this "pretty" wallpaper because on the receiver side it is anything but pretty.

#7 If you use Oulook, be sure to turn off e-mail notification. I am a magazine editor, and in an effort to "track" their reach to reporters, many PR folk turn on this pesky feature. Since I also have Outlook, the system asks if I want to notify so-and-so that their message has been read. I always say NO!

I have one more that seems to be cropping up with e-mails that I recieve lately. PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK. It seems that more and more people turn this feature on and don;t seem to understand why I don't like reading their e-mails.

Great ones, Kami. I don't see #6 very often, so it didn't occur to me to add it. I hadn't seen #7 for quite a well, that is, until last week when I was going back and forth with someone on email about an extremely non-critical issue and had to deal with that stupid notification system.

Jeremy, have you seen business emails sent in all caps? In know it happens with some personal emails, but I've been lucky enough to have been spared CAPS LOCK business emails.

yes unfortunatly I see a few people, even within my own company, use the all caps feature for e-mails

Several of the people I deal with actually prefer multi-topic emails so they can respond in one sitting. However, these emails are more issues- than task-oriented, lending themselves easier to addressing each issue/question with a paragraph response. Maybe the best thing to do is find out what someone's email preferences are ahead of time.

Great point, Andrea. I use the same tactic for emails that involve updating someone on an issue point by point. Generally, I'll number the various action items so nothing gets missed.

And, as you point out, it really doesn't matter how you do this as long as it works for all parties involved. That's real-world etiquette.

#9 - Assign categories to each person in your address book eg client, partner, supplier, co-worker and then assign colors to each category.

This helps you distinguish betweem internal email, customer email etc and focus more quickly. It also means any uncategorized email will be a different color so it's easier to filter spam etc.

Great tip, Morgan. Personally, I tend to use folders rather than color codes to achieve this when using client email programs, and labels when using gmail.

Differentiating between spam and non-spammy email is a tedious task. Anything that makes it easier to delete spammy emails WITHOUT accidentally deleting real email is a wonderful thing.

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