5 Essential Email Etiquette Habits: Write Smart Email

I’ve been writing a lot about Time Management and The 7 Habits of Hight ly Effective People lately. But, based on a few email I’ve recently received I had the idea to share 5 Essential Email Etiquette Habits: How To Write Smart Email.

1. Care About The Reputation You Are Building

Seriously – every time you hit send you are only seconds away from making a personal and professional impression. Every Single Time! So, what impression do you want?

• Respectful, professional, on-point, knowledgeable… or
• Bossy, wastes my time, long-winded, confusing?

You choose – but the next 4 Essential Email Etiquette Habits will help you write smart email and will help you stay in the respectful, professional, on-point and knowledgeable space.

2. Use The Email Subject Line Wisely

Two weeks ago someone sent me an email message about Time Management training. The subject line was ‘Today.’  I have no clue what the connection is for this subject line… but there it was. I’m sure it will only take you a few seconds to scan through your own Inbox to find other confusing subject line examples you’ve received.

Be smart with your subject line because people use the subject line AND your reputation to prioritize your email… and decide if they should read your email now – later – or not at all.

3. Be Brief… But Write Clear Email. Get To The Point

You certainly want your email messages short – but you also want your email to be meaningful.

I recently received the following message ‘Hi – Please tell me more about your training and how much it will cost.’

I love to have prospect clients make inquiries, but I’m happy to offer numerous corporate training workshops that help clients with employee development and increase customer satisfaction. The challenge is that it is impossible to know if this person wants a lunch-in-learn, full day course or perhaps brainstorming facilitation.

If you are spending more than a few minutes writing the email message and you are having challenges getting to the point and being clear, it’s a good sign you should pick up the phone.

4. Don’t Send Email You Wrote In A Meeting or When Walking

Firstly, writing an email during a meeting is rude unless you have permission to send an email that’s relevant to the meeting. If you have a creative idea in a meeting, write it on a piece of paper – that way it looks like you are taking notes relevant to the meeting.

Walking and writing is dangerous – especially at intersections… or if you are also trying to enjoy a coffee.

You are distracted when you are in a meeting or walking, therefore, email you write during a meeting or when you’ve been walking are often full of spelling and grammar mistakes. They also likely have incomplete thoughts – not clearly describing what you need to tell – or what your question is.

Any way you look at it – writing an email when you’re in a meeting or walking and then sending the email is an easy way to damage your reputation.

5. Re-Read: Be Sure You’ve Used These Essential Email Etiquette Habits

Re-read your [brief] email for poor grammar, spelling mistakes and the use of the wrong word. Spell check doesn’t correct the wrong work… I mean word. See what I mean?

Re-read your email from the other persons point of view.  What do they know / not know? Have you given them all the information they need? Do they know all of the acronyms you’ve used?

6. BONUS:  Say Hello

Starting your email with hello or good morning reduces that chance that you’ll sound bossy or angry.  This clearly improves your personal and professional reputation. So, unless you are emailing the same person 20 or more times each day, go ahead – make someone’s day.  Say hello.

Happy communicating.

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• Email Etiquette: Should You Reply To My Email?

Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates courses including Email Etiquette, Managing Difficult Conversations, Multigenerational Training, Time Management and Mindfulness.

Find answers to your Professional Development questions / needs at brucemayhewconsulting.com.

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen.

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I’d enjoy reading your comments on this post.

Email Writing: Training For Management

I recently gave a presentation on email etiquette to an executive team that reported into VP’s and SVP’s.  I had been conducting email training at a large international company to customer service and IT teams and the executive wanted to benefit from skills development so they could better support their bosses. The executive also wanted to improve their communications skills so they could be examples to the people they mentored.

I was impressed.

When establishing the training objectives for this executive team I knew I had to design the training that hit all the key points I teach in my Email Writing Training course, but in this case the examples had to change. Why – because high-level decisions were being made based on the email messages the executive team were writing… so I had to tailor the material to this audience to make their learning curve as effective and as short as possible.

Free image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Of course the executive team still needed to know how to get their messages noticed, get to the point quickly and deliver accurate information with crystal clear clarity. But more than ever – they needed to learn how to deliver short to-the-point message with a respectful tone (not an abrupt or privileged tone). Why? Because if they didn’t accomplish all objectives it could easily lead to a bad decision being made by their VP’s and SVP’s… and a very dark stain on their very profitable career.

What Was My Training Agenda?

First, I taught them how to effectively use To.., Cc… and how to create a powerful Subject Line.

Second, I taught them how to develop and structure the main body of their email.

Third, I taught them how to write a professional salutation and signature box.

Example:

Within the main body of their email, the email writing / email etiquette tips I taught were how to:

• Bottom line their messages to reflect the Main Objective
• Make their work stand out using Headings to compartmentalize important information
• Keep information in an orderly manner using Bullets, Numeric Lists and Subheadings
• Use simple, everyday language and to keep jargon to a minimum (unless you know 100% that the information will only be used internally)

I often get disagreement about using simple, everyday language; then as soon as I describe why I get a room full of people who agree – here’s why.  Senior people often have to speak with the press, influential investors, shareholders, policy makers and important suppliers. Therefore, we want to give them access to the tools (in this case their tools are words), they can use.  Also, when we use simpler words we actually increase clarity. For example:

Lets use the sentence:  “The process will elicit the information we require.”

To make it clear what I want to change. I am highlighting those words in red.

This sentence is OK… but lets change it to “The process will provide the information we need.”

When we make that change we make it easier to read and understand. Why is this important? Many reasons – but the easiest to describe is that we are all living in a world that represents many different ethnic, cultural and multigenerational differences, and everyone benefits (including ourselves) when we speak plainly.

But I wouldn’t stop there with this example. I would take “The process will provide the information we need.”

And I would prefer to write ”The survey questions will provide the information we need.”

Now everyone knows exactly what is happening. We don’t have to guess what “the process” is. Now our message is crystal clear and easy to read.

Conclusion

If you’re not worried about your bosses’ success – then use your own success as your motivator.

If you provide your senior management messages that are hard to understand you are creating a bad impression of your own work.

I’ve said it many times; email accounts for as much as 90% of most office communication. So, 90% of your time communicating with others can be promoting your reputation – or it could be slowly eroding your reputation, career, business and even your customer base.

Every email you send reflects on you (and your business). 

Happy communicating.

Click here to join our priority list of people who receive our latest Business Communication blog posts.

If you enjoyed this post we think you’ll like:

• Email Etiquette: Should You Reply To My Email?
• Improve Your Time Management Skills
• Generational Differences Training
• Effective Business Email Writing Training
• Mindfulness At Work
• How to Hire And Retain Millennials
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Habit 1

Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates courses including Email Etiquette, Managing Difficult Conversations, Multigenerational Training, Time Management and Mindfulness.

Find answers to your Professional Development questions / needs at brucemayhewconsulting.com.

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen.

Click on the image to watch us on Canada AM.

I’d enjoy reading your comments on this post.

Email Time Management Tips Part 2

Use email to improve your time management so it makes you more efficient and doesn’t slow you down. Your personal and corporate reputation depends on it – including the overall quality of your work.

Please enjoy Part 2 of Email Time Management Tips. Have you read Part 1? Click here for Email Time Management Part 1.

Set Up Times Of The Day

One of your best opportunities to increase your time management, productivity and work quality is to only read and reply to email at specific times of the day. This best practice helps you stay focused on your strategic work and treat email as an information flow / communication flow.

I’ll bet most of your incoming email can wait an hour or two for a reply – they certainly do when you are in a meeting… so, set your server to check for incoming email every few hours. If email is critical and time sensitive to your job, have your email software check your server every hour.

There is great value in this tip. Research shows that the short interruptions like email notices lowers our productivity, errors go up and quality of all of our work (including email writing), goes down.

Don’t Let Disruptions In

You likely have a smartphone, a computer and an iPad / tablet. This means you get three announcements / interruptions for every email that comes in… plus a few more for Instant Messages (IM). Turn these notifications off when you are concentrating on strategic work… or at least leave only one on.

Read Once – Answer, Delegate or Delete

Now that you are sorting your email using Folders and Filters (see Email Time Management Part 1) you are doing a great job of prioritizing your email. The next thing to do is to avoid seeing the same message two or three times before you answer – a clear waste of time.

When you open an email the first time you should try to answer it if you have all the necessary information. If it’s more appropriate for you to delegate it or delete it… then do that.

Create Email Templates For Repeat Responses

Email templates save you and your employees from retyping the same information over and over. Email templates also offer the opportunity to strategically include important information, express organizational values (brand), and check tone.

Email templates can be great time savers but they can also be horrible for your personal and corporate brand if they ‘feel’ canned or impersonal. Everyone who uses email templates should still take a moment to personalize them to their audience and situation.

On Vacation

1- The Out-Of-Office Message

Your out-of-office message lets you manage client and co-worker expectations while you are away.

If you are going to be away for more than a few days include a notice of your pending departure as part of your email signature (and voice mail), ahead of time. Why wait to the last-minute?

For many tips on voice and email guidelines, read my blog post Out Of Office Reply = Customer Service.

2- The Vacation Email Inbox

Returning to work and a full email inbox can make you want to stay home under the covers. Like most things with email time management there are multiple solutions and the right solution depends on you, your style and your job. Two of my favourite options are:

1. While on vacation take a half hour every morning to sit quietly with a coffee and review your email. Reply to critical ones, delegate to your back up or to other relevant people. Try to not get dragged into an issue, this is your time to relax. Then, go spend the day worry free with your family / friends.
2. This is a more drastic option. In your out of office message identify who your back up is and that any messages you receive while you are away will be deleted. If they want a reply from you they should resend their message or current status of the situation to you on the day you get back.

Pick Up The Phone

Sometimes email is not the best solution – sometimes a phone call or face–to–face conversation is the best answer. If you are discussing options or solutions then I can almost guarantee email is not your best solution. Also, if someone phones or emails you and asks to speak with you, let that dialogue happen… you should even encourage it.

Unsubscribe From News Feeds

You should subscribe to this blog to get regular updates… but remove yourself from mailing lists you are receiving and not reading. They are not important if you are not reading them. In addition, not only are they loading up your inbox – they may be subconsciously making you feel you are not working hard enough.

Conclusion

Every email you write impacts your personal and professional reputation. Be sure you are using your email and email management software to make the most of your time and reputation.

Have you read Time Management Tips Part 1? Get great tips on using your time well, subject lines, how to use email folders and email filters and much much more.

Happy communicating.

Click here to join our priority list of people who receive our latest Business Communication blog posts.

If you enjoyed this post we think you’ll like:

• Email Etiquette: Should You Reply To My Email?
• Improve Your Time Management Skills
• Generational Differences Training
• Effective Business Email Writing Training
• Mindfulness At Work
• How to Hire And Retain Millennials
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Habit 1

Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates courses including Email Etiquette, Managing Difficult Conversations, Multigenerational Training, Time Management and Mindfulness.

Find answers to your Professional Development questions / needs at brucemayhewconsulting.com.

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen.

Click on the image to watch us on Canada AM.

I’d enjoy reading your comments on this post.

How To Send And Receive Less Email

This year most of my email training clients have had the same main request; they want their employees to learn how to email effectively so that they send and receive fewer email. And no wonder since the average business person sends and receives over 100 email every day… many over 300 every day.

Email was once seen as a tool that would increase efficiencies and competitive opportunity. Today email is a great business tool we can’t do without. But more and more we’re using it as a crutch instead of as a catapult.

The challenge is that the way we write email is decreasing our efficiencies, easily costing companies $3,000 or more PER employee every year in loss of productivity and opportunity lost… not to mention the loss to their personal and professional reputation.

How much time we spend emailing every day is astonishing. For example: if a person sends and receives 100 email during an 8-hour day (not accounting for lunch, breaks or meetings), they use email every 4.8 minutes.  If they send and receive 300 email they use email every 1.6 minutes. imagine…

Thankfully there are a easy steps we can all learn to use that will reduce email volume and be more efficient at work; here are just a few.

Use The Phone Or Walk Down The Hall

Sometimes even the most professional email is not the right solution. If we’re wondering how to email, the best strategy may be to pick up the phone – especially if there are issues that need to be brainstormed. The bonus is that conversations often build better business relationships and usually take less time.

Consider All Of Your Needs – And All Of Your Readers Needs

Too often we write email as a single thought – not a complete need or objective. Over an extended period of time (and countless email interruptions), we send email messages back and forth until we finally have discussed or shared (perhaps with some frustration), all the important points. When you write email, learn to bottom line your objectives and stick to the important issues – but cover all of them at once.

Write Great Email Subject Lines

Email subject lines are used as a primary resource readers use to determine if they will read your email now, later or never. Subject lines are also the first opportunity for you to make an impression. If you leave the subject line blank – or use a universal word like ‘Sale’ or ‘Meeting’, you risk being overlooked – all the time.

Value Your Values

Employees should know without hesitation the corporate and department values. They should also know how they can use these values to differentiate the company and themselves every time they write email or speak with clients, suppliers or their co-workers.

Conclusion

Email training is a fast and efficient way to turn email back into a catapult for your employees and business. When you know how to email, it’s a powerful business tool and a very sound investment.

Happy communicating.

Click here to join our priority list of people who receive our latest Business Communication blog posts.

If you enjoyed this post we think you’ll like:

• Email Etiquette: Should You Reply To My Email?
• Improve Your Time Management Skills
• Generational Differences Training
• Effective Business Email Writing Training
• Mindfulness At Work
• How to Hire And Retain Millennials
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Habit 1

Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates courses including Email Etiquette, Managing Difficult Conversations, Multigenerational Training, Time Management and Mindfulness.

Find answers to your Professional Development questions / needs at brucemayhewconsulting.com.

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen.

Click on the image to watch us on Canada AM.

I’d enjoy reading your comments on this post.

Please like, share, subscribe and/or comment on this blog.

My Business Email (a rhyme – not a poem)

If someone told me yesterday I would be posting a business email rhyme I would have thought that they were off their rocker. Then last night happened.

To be very clear, I am not a poet. However last night I awoke at 11:30 PM with a pile of words rhyming around in my head. I learned long ago sometimes destiny needs to have its own way so I got out of bed and put fingers to keyboard. Soon after I crawled back into bed and was fast asleep having purged the words from my mind.

Long story short… with only a sparse attempt at editing, here is my business email rhyme (out of respect for all poets and poetry readers I refrain from calling it a poem).

My business email
Get to the point
They answer Who, What, Where and When first
Then Why and How last

My business email
Are easy to read
My ‘Action Items’ found easily
For the reader and me

My business email
Use a ‘Subject Line’ that’s clear
There’s no question of purpose
So they’re read first and not… last (at the rear)

My business email
Use To… and Cc… proper
To… means ‘Read This Now Please’
Cc… means ‘This Is Not A Show Stopper’

My business email
Are short not abrupt
Care is important
Email can cause a reader to erupt

My business email
Consider customer service as key
Clients, suppliers and co-workers
Deserve quality attention from me

My business email
Let my values shine through
I remember to do
Everything I can do

My business email
Are used to confirm fact
I use the phone or my feet
When I need to brainstorm or chat

My business email
Know grammar’s a friend
I use bullets and commas
And periods to end

My business email
Use Hello, Please and Thank you
Young family lessons
Are business tools also

My business email
Address people by name
I build trust in my promises
And that trust is my fame

So there you have it my friends and followers. I hope this has brought you a smile… and perhaps an email writing tip. And if you get woken up in the middle of the night by a thought, know you are not alone. I may also be awake. Mine might be the other light that is on down the street.

Happy communicating.

Click here to join our priority list of people who receive our latest Business Communication blog posts.

If you enjoyed this post we think you’ll like:

• Email Etiquette: Should You Reply To My Email?
• Improve Your Time Management Skills
• Generational Differences Training
• Effective Business Email Writing Training
• Mindfulness At Work
• How to Hire And Retain Millennials
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Habit 1

Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates courses including Email Etiquette, Managing Difficult Conversations, Multigenerational Training, Time Management and Mindfulness.

Find answers to your Professional Development questions / needs at brucemayhewconsulting.com.

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen.

Click on the image to watch us on Canada AM.

I’d enjoy reading your comments on this post.

An Email Style Guide; Should Your Company Have One?

Since over 90% of most business communication and relationships are managed via email, now might be the right time for you to have an email Style Guide. In other words… create a policy guide that will do many positive things like:

• Establish e-guidelines and expectations that help employees provide consistent professional service
• Empower everyone to demonstrate your company’s unique style, products / services, brand
• Unite your employees in a Team Building exercise
• Support all levels of your company and your customers

And to add even more benefit, an email Style Guide is also a powerful orientation tool to introduce new staff as well as suppliers / contract employees.

As you consider this path, your first few questions will likely be, “What is the process?” and “What will we end up with?” Well the answer to both questions is quite simple. You can focus on policies that outline:

• “What People Can Do”  Or
• “What People Can Not Do”

Because we live in a judicial society (more stick than carrot), the more common approach is unfortunately the later. My advice as a Toronto based consultant who provides email etiquette training, is that you choose the flexible approach and create a Style Guide that will be a positive influence and act as a guideline – not a rulebook. By focusing on “What People Can Do” you benefit by empowering your employees to make the right choices in many different situations.

Should Your Company’s Email Style Guide Be Custom?

Another question you might have is “Can I buy an off-the-shelf solution?”

To answer that question you need to look internally. Your products / services are unique. Your customer service is unique. Your mission, vision and values are unique. The way you do business and your unique value proposition is different from your competitors. Your customer mix and their needs are unique. So, should your email Style Guide be unique?

The way I am positioning this you already know I believe your email Style Guide should be unique to your company. Here is more detail why.

Your brand reputation is one of your most valuable assets – and because you and your employees communicate 90% of the time via email, it’s one of the most visible ways to live your brand… every minute of every day.

Using another company’s Style Guide is like moving into a neighbours home. Even in Toronto that just isn’t done. In a business environment, if you use policies that are not your own you force a disconnect between your core competencies, your customer service and your customer expectations. That disconnect will be felt every minute of every day by your employees and your customers… and that will result in you losing both employees and customer from frustration (both of which negatively impact ROI).

With virtually no more work this is also your opportunity to define your companies unique style for all electronic based communication be it email, email marketing, presentations, websites etc. Because they are all in the electronic world – they all pretty much follow the same guidelines.

By building your own email Style Guide you will also get maximum team-building benefit by seeing this process as a unique organization-wide opportunity. The benefit is to let all employees have impact – to allow everyone to join together and build a document that represents all that is best about your company / employees / product / service. That said, most companies will want to establish a design team, (a body of people who will collect and evaluate employee feedback with the corporate culture and corporate mission and vision for the future).

What Should Your Email Style Guide Include?

There is no definitive email style guide rulebook that must be followed to the letter. Every company is unique and as I suggested I believe your email Style Guide should be designed to match the unique corporate culture.

But, it’s nice to have a starting place, so the following offers a sample of email etiquette categories to be addressed.

1. Support The Visual / Readability:

• Agreed upon email signature structure
• Social Media references and graphics
• Agreed upon fonts, colours and layouts

2. How to Support Your Brand:

• Tag line
• Demonstrate corporate values and customer service promise
• How to treat ethnicity, gender, religious or racial references

3. Structure /  Composition:

• When to use To, Cc… and Bcc…
• How to quickly address the essential information (get to the point)
• How to manage multiple topics and / or multiple audiences

Conclusion

As you plan your email Style Guide and who will help you with this important project I offer you this one last tip.

In most cases when someone reads your email they are making a choice to invest their valuable time and talent. In almost every case the decision to read or not read your email is based on your email etiquette and the following:

• Your past email reputation (for being relevant, to the point, well written and polite)
• Your subject line
• What they see within the preview screen  (which is usually only the first few lines of your message). In fact – many people even answer based on those first few lines only

Make sure you create a helpful guide that everyone at your company uses to demonstrate they respect their audiences time as much as they respect their own time. If they do, your employees – and your company will be rewarded with respect, loyalty, better work relationships and greater ROI.

Imagine work being easier. Imagine work being more productive.

Happy communicating.

Click here to join our priority list of people who receive our latest Business Communication blog posts.

If you enjoyed this post we think you’ll like:

• Email Etiquette: Should You Reply To My Email?
• Improve Your Time Management Skills
• Generational Differences Training
• Effective Business Email Writing Training
• Mindfulness At Work
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Habit 1

Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates courses including Email Etiquette, Managing Difficult Conversations, Multigenerational Training, Time Management and Mindfulness.

Find answers to your Professional Development questions / needs at brucemayhewconsulting.com.

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen.

Click on the image to watch us on Canada AM.

I’d enjoy reading your comments on this post.

Why Do Email Messages Seem Angry Or Rude?

For many, email adds to workplace stress and hurts job performance as well as office morale. Let’s look at why.

We love email because it’s so quick. And, it will help make us look good by correcting our spelling and grammar –  if we ask.

But email is unloved for many more reasons. Here’s a partial list that the attendees of my last Email Etiquette Training created.

Unloved Email List

1. We get too many email
2. We are cc’d on many we don’t need to see
3. Many email ‘seem’ rude, abrupt, bossy or angry
4. People expect an immediate response
5. People send incomplete thoughts – all day long
6. Many email messages are large blocks of text that are hard to read
7. People don’t use spell check, pay attention to upper / lower case or use punctuation
8. Email are sent without the attachments
9. Email are sent to the wrong people
10. People send junk email / email jokes etc…

… and the list goes on.

The risk to our reputation is terrifying. With only a quick scan of the ‘Unloved Email List’ we can feel the aggravation, stress and impatience many of us feel toward email an its senders. It’s a wonder we still send email instead of picking up the phone or walking down the hall.

Now, I think we can agree there will always be customers, suppliers or co-workers who are intentionally aggressive; workplace bullies even. But I believe this is the exception rather than the rule.

I feel most of the aggression and resulting frustration we feel is not intended. So until we win the lottery we have to figure out how to do a better job of building respectful and profitable relationships with everyone.  I believe that means a combination of two things:

• Learn how to respect each other (which may need communication training)
• Learn how to use technology which includes email etiquette and phone etiquette rules (which almost certainly needs etiquette training)

It may seem funny to train someone on email etiquette or how to use the phone and voice mail… but I don’t think it should. Let’s consider – most of the technologies we use today are new to us.

I know I didn’t study email etiquette or phone etiquette at school. And when I first started working I was sent on Excel training, Outlook training and many more courses. So why hesitate at taking email etiquette or phone etiquette training?

All day we try to build relationships and share information with our customers, co-workers and suppliers by email and phone.

Let’s take a look at what I mean using two examples.

Example I:

It wasn’t much more than 10 years ago that if you wanted to give someone some information that you had to either book a meeting or pick up the phone. What does that mean?

Back then we were having a one-on-one conversation with ONLY the right person. We were also able to use verbal and non-verbal cues to determine the emotional state of the person we were speaking with and if they understood. We were also not distracted by our smart phone vibrating on our hip.

Example II:

The wide distribution of voice mail is also not much more than 10-15 years old. I still remember the outcry when my Scotiabank office peers when it was installed. The primary argument was how impersonal it was.

Today, most voice messages are either too short with scattered information, or they ramble on and on – a series of fragmented thoughts.

Conclusion:

So that’s how I think technology is impacting how we build loyal, trusting relationships. What do you think?

I don’t want to leave you empty-handed so here are a few of my email etiquette Do’s to help alleviate stress you may be feeling.

Do:

1. Do write a relevant Subject line
2. Do use a friendly greeting, be polite and courteous
3. Do pay attention to Cc… when replying
4. Do demonstrate your Core Competencies and Brand Value

My Question to You:

Let me leave you with one question.

How do you think technology is impacting how we build loyal, trusting relationships?

Happy communicating.

Click here to join our priority list of people who receive our latest Business Communication blog posts.

If you enjoyed this post we think you’ll like:

• Email Etiquette: Should You Reply To My Email?
• Improve Your Time Management Skills
• Generational Differences Training
• Core Values
• Effective Business Email Etiquette Training
• Mindfulness At Work

Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates courses including Email Etiquette, Managing Difficult Conversations, Multigenerational Training, Time Management and Mindfulness.

Find answers to your Professional Development questions / needs at brucemayhewconsulting.com.

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen.

Click on the image to watch us on Canada AM.

I’d enjoy reading your comments on this post.

Forward this blog post to a friend or colleague.

How to Reply to Email I

It’s difficult to control the email people send you, but you can protect your personal and corporate reputation when you use reply or use reply all. Let’s look at some ways to make the best out of every situation.

This is the first of a two-part series of ‘How to Reply to Email I & II.‘

Look To See Who is in To… Who is in Cc...

When replying to an email the first thing to do is check to see if the person who wrote the email has sent it to people who don’t need to see it? If the writer has, do those people a favour and remove them. They may not know what you just did for them – but at least they will not receive more email they don’t need to see… and this time coming from you. 

Second, ask yourself if there are people in the To… field that really should be in the Cc… field. If there are, help those people prioritize their inbox by moving them. The rule is:

• To… is for the people who need to take action
• Cc… is for the people who need to know
• Bc… is mostly seen as sneaky

Take Control of the Email Subject Line

If the sender wrote a great email subject line then keep it! This will help everyone track the conversation.

If the email subject line is poor (for example, if it says “Meeting”), I recommend you take control and adjust it to something that reflects the purpose of the message (for example, change it to “Meeting: Monday for Sales: Agenda Update”). In this case – if you can keep the first word when re-writing the subject it will help everyone track the conversation.

There is much more to say about Email Subject Lines – read my blog post dedicated to Email Subject Lines.

Please read How to Reply to Email II for more valuable, time and cost saving tips. Don’t risk missing it – Subscribe to this blog or perhaps add an RSS feed.

Happy communication and email subject line writing. 

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Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates courses including Business Writing, Email Etiquette, Time Management and Mindfulness. 

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen. Click on the image to the right to watch us on Canada AM.

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Email Subject Line: Write A Great One

Every day the average business person reads and writes 50 to 200 email… and hopefully every email message has a subject line. Used correctly, there’s no question that email is a cost-effective way to build profitable client relationships.

The challenge is how to:

• Keep your email messages from going directly to the junk file
• Get your email messages read – ever
• Get your email messages acted on in a timely manner

Unless you are President Obama, I can guarantee that if you don’t have a powerful, relevant subject line your email message is not being read and acted on by everyone you would like.

Increase Your Email Open Rates

If you don’t convince your target audience to open your email, the time you spent writing your message will have been completely wasted. So, here are 4 tips on how to write a great email subject line.

Tip 1.

Include the purpose of the project or email. For example: ‘Mayhew Artwork’ or ‘CMA Tradeshow’ helps identify the client and the project. This technique also helps the receiver track the history of the project and file the message in their Inbox or Project File.

Tip 2.

Include a call to action in your subject line. For example: ‘Mayhew Artwork: Approval Required’ tells the receiver exactly what they need to do. If they are familiar with the project mentioned, it’s likely they can also estimate the time they’ll need to invest.

If they wrote just ‘Artwork’ that tells the reader very little.

Tip 3.

Keep your email subject line as short as possible, but still informative. There are many good reasons to do this, but the easiest to relate to is that more and more people are using smart phones. If a smart phone is used it’s likely only nine to fifteen characters may be viewed.

Some iPhones are now displaying more of your subject line.

Tip 4.

Write your email subject line after you’ve finished drafting and editing your message. I promise this is the best way to write a great subject line. Not sold? Consider how difficult it is to write a powerful executive summary before your proposal is finished.

Email Subject Line Summary

Your email subject line should be short, tell the purpose of your email and help the reader decide if they’ll open it now or later. A great subject line will also give readers insight into what they’ll be responsible to do.

Now, go write some great subject lines.

Happy communication and email writing. 

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If you enjoyed this post we think you’ll like:

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• Mindfulness At Work
• How to Hire And Retain Millennials
• Improve Your Time Management Skills
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Habit 1

Bruce Mayhew Consulting facilitates courses including Business Writing, Email Etiquette, Time Management and Mindfulness. 

Give us a call at 416 617 0462. We’ll listen. Click on the image to the right to watch us on Canada AM.

www.brucemayhewconsulting.com I’d enjoy reading your comments on this post.

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