Email Etiquette

You may remember a time before there was email…a time when communications within most organizations were more formal and followed strict lines of protocol. Email has done wonders to break down some of the communications bureaucracy and hierarchy within organizations; today virtually anyone can speak to anyone else within an organization with the click of a mouse. Email has brought with it a new informality to business communications – but it didn’t come with instructions.

Your Signature

• Use your email program to create an email signature block that will automatically attach to all of your outgoing messages. It saves you the effort of including your contact information every time you send a message and brings a professional touch to your communications.
• You might simply include your name, business name, contact details and website or you might also include a sentence or two about your business or even a favorite funny or inspirational quote.

Reply Quickly

• Because of its immediacy, people expect fast replies to emails. A response within 24 hours is probably as long as most people would consider appropriate. Your email practices will educate others about what to expect from you in email communications; if you respond quickly, people will expect that you’ll always respond quickly; if you set a 24 hour or less benchmark, likewise people will learn what to expect from you – but of course there will always be those emails that do require your immediate attention.

Spell Check

• Always, always re-read your emails before you send them to make sure they make sense and to fix any spelling or grammatical errors. Set your email to automatically spell-check for clarity, tone or correctness, as a colleague to look over the content for you. It might be inconsequential to you, but a poorly worded email that conveys the wrong tone and is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors can destroy your credibility.