E-mail Etiquette Matters

When you write an e-mail, you want it opened and read sooner than later. An important key to getting it opened is observing e-mail etiquette. Here are some quick tips you can use to improve e-mail.

• Use a greeting. In casual e-mail, a simple, “Hi, Joe,” or “Hello, Sarah,” is fine. In a formal e-mail, use standard letter correspondence etiquette: “Dear [the person’s title and their last name] followed by a colon,” for example, “Dear Dr. Carlson:”.
• Send only to people who need to see the e-mail, and when responding, delete anyone who doesn’t need to see it.
• Get to the point and don’t waste people’s time with a lengthy introduction.
• Break up your e-mail into small paragraphs or bullets since a solid block of text is hard to read.
• Don’t spend a lot of time with formatting since some recipients may not be able to see it.

E-mail is a necessary tool for business today. How well you write your e-mails contributes to how positively productive you are. Check out my new Writing and Managing E-mail workshop for best practices and new techniques to create successful e-mails, manage the tone of your e-mails, and control your in-box.