1. Get to the point. This is very critical especially if you are sending a brief reminder or note. Many people consume many hours receiving and responding to emails. The last thing they need is to reed a paragraph when the main point is to remind them to bring home milk. Also people find it hard to digest such heavily written messages and may stop reading the email half way through and then are concerned that they missed out on something.
2. Send emails in bulk. Let’s say you have a question or comment that is generally received through your email. Instead of wasting valuable time replying to each and every one of these common question, send an email to the general audience with the question. First of all, this will make them feel like you care about there concern or curiosity and secondly, you don’t have to worry about missing out on someone.
3. Don’t use bulky email signatures. The last thing people want to see at the end of an email is you phone number, address, website, blog, twitter account, etc. First, many people can only read emails written in plain text so therefor defeating the purpose a signature. And many times, if you are sending a quick note as opposed to a lengthy email, who would really care about a signature? A simple initial, name or even a smiley face will suffice in most cases.
4. Proof read, proof read, proof read. Honestly, this can’t be emphasised enough. Even if it’s a quick reminder or a message to your boss, they way an email is written gives a great impression on your ability to communicate. It is really demoralizing (I will find a better adjective after I post this) reading an email in which every other word is spelled incorrectly and is missing proper punctuation.
5. Be careful with the use of sarcasm. Email is very different than vocal communication because you cannot tell the use of sarcasm. Example: “That speech on social media sucked, dude. lol ;-)” It is hard to tell in this case wether he/she thinks that the speeched sucked or thought it was great and just winked. Unless you know that the person you sent this email to and that he/she is aware, then I recommend you don’t do this.
If you have any thing to add please feel free to comment.
