More and more emails being sent these days have more in common with mobile phone text messages than they do with the original concept of the electronic mail message. Part of the problem, lies with the very simplicity and speed that the email system has come to profit by. All too often, an email can be tapped out and dispatched before any real thought or care has been taken about its content, style, structure or, even destination.
This results in reduced email productivity for your recipients, as they are required to spend more time identifying your message, its importance, whether it requires a reply and so forth. If they have any kind of filing system, then a poorly structured email may be happily dropped into a folder and left to grow old.
To assist your recipients, and to prevent such an email overload of useless, uninformative and unhelpful messages, here are a few basic tips. These will help to ensure that you help keep the whole email system fluid and useful, and help us all keep a slightly more organized inbox.
The first step is to consider composing a good and meaningful subject heading. This is all too often ignored, and emails arrived with ‘No subject’ as the title may well find the filing system transfers it straight to the junk folder. Keep a title short, so that it is easily read quickly, but meaningful. This will help the recipient to understand what the email is about, and will help them to know whether it is necessary to read it immediately, and whether any action is likely to be expected.
When people compose a letter, they often think very carefully about the structure. This includes things such as including contact details, an introduction, referring to or reminding them about previous communications or discussions, and then keeping the purpose of the letter plain. With emails, however, there can often be very little or no structure – frequently even omitting the basic ‘Dear So-and-so,’ at the beginning, making it reasonably unclear as for whom it is intended. Think carefully about these matters, since an organized email is more likely to be a read email, understood and acted upon.
Consider whether a reply is required. If you need a response, then say so.! Make it clear what you need to know, and by when, if it is urgent. People have enough email overload as it is, without replying to you to find out if you need a response. If no reply is needed, then again, it is helpful to make this clear so that there is no doubt on the recipient’s part. Often if it is unclear whether a response is required, the email will be left sitting in the inbox for ever more, snowed under by similarly ambiguous messages.
Here’s an idea; prefix your subject line with the following:
- FYI:subject line here… – the recipient will immediately know that this email is informational and no action is required from his side
- Action required: subject line here… – the recipient immediately knows he needs to action something based on the content of the email
- Response required: subject line here… – recipient is made clearly aware that he needs to respond to this email.
You can pre-append these with the word Urgent and so give your email some more importance. Of course one would not want to overly use the “Urgent part” as to avoid a “cry wolf” situation.
Finally, including your name and alternative contact details at the end of EVERY message can be very helpful. This especially, if the message is coming from an organization where there may be very many people sending such messages. At least that way, people know who you are and can try to get hold of you by other means if necessary. In addition to which, it is only polite. After all, you wouldn’t send a letter off to anyone without including your name at the bottom, so simply because you are using email to compose your message, why should that be any different?. All too often, the basic rules and courteous traditions associated with writing letters have been left behind and forgotten with the advent of email. Yet the truth is, the old traditional styles had many advantages, and eased communications far more than a simple button labeled ‘Send’.
Your comments are welcome!
