Tips: Professional E-mail

E-mail is something that is so easy it’s hard. I’m amazed at the poor quality of the e-mail that comes my way.

How you handle e-mail says something about how you are professionally. An error filled message or untimely response can send a message that you don’t take pride in what you do. Yet I see these things every day.

I’m no master when it comes to e-mail, but I think I do pretty well. If nothing else, I’ve got a good idea what not to do. If you’re like me, you’ve got so much e-mail coming through everyday that it’s damn near impossible to be perfect with all of it. It’s clear that most of us could do a bit better with e-mail.

Many people struggle with e-mail, so, if you work on it a bit, you could really stand out. On that note, I thought I’d take a little time and outline some professional e-mail tips.

Spellcheck. This may sound funny coming from a blogger who has a problem with typos, but I assure you I do my very best to check and double check my e-mails for spelling and grammar errors. There are times I let one slip and I almost always find it down the road and I’m totally embarrassed.

You’d think that people communicating professionally would do a great job of catching typos and spelling errors. In my experience, you’d be wrong. I’ve had e-mails from CEOs, technical directors, accountants, bookkeepers, Organizations—you name it—with some really silly, easy to find and fix, errors. I shake my head every time.

Most e-mail applications have spellcheck of some sort.

Respond to your e-mail in a timely fashion. Nothing screams “unprofessional” more than an extremely slow response to legitimate e-mail. Ok, no response at all is worse, and not as uncommon as you might expect, but it’s bad business either way. I know as well as anyone how hard it can be to get to and answer everything that comes in. And I also know that no matter how hard you try a few are going to slip through the cracks.

I’m not trying to say you need to respond to every unsolicited e-mail that comes in. I don’t try to do that either. I’d spend all day doing e-mail if I did. However, when it’s important, or on a topic that needs a response, it looks really bad if you don’t respond quickly.

I take the time to do my very best to not only respond to most of my e-mail, but to do so as quickly and as completely as I can. Many people have expressed their amazement and gratitude, which makes me feel like I’m doing the right thing. As well, I know how mad it makes me when people don’t respond to me. There are too many times I’ve got to send 2, or more often 3, reminders before I get a response. Each time I do that my view of the person’s professionalism drops.

Even a simple, “I’ve received your e-mail but I’m a bit snowed under right now, is it ok if I get back to you in a week or so?” is alright, as long as it’s actually followed up on. For when you’re on vacation, or not able to respond to e-mail, it’s good to set up an auto responder. It might not be personal, but at least you’ll let people know why you’re not getting back to them.

For digging out from under too much e-mail, I found out some tips you can use. These were very helpful to me coming back from my last vacation. You might also give Michael Hyatt’s Automated E-mail Followup a read.

Make sure your e-mail is (mostly) relevant. We all get too much e-mail. Keep your messages on topic. A little aside asking how a person’s day is going is fine, but don’t try to mix to many topics into one e-mail.

Be concise yet complete. Keep it short as possible while making sure you’ve included all the relevant information. If you ramble you might lose the reader and I don’t know how many times I’ve received an e-mail that was missing some crucial bit of information that caused me to e-mail back and ask for it. That doesn’t look too good. ;0)

A quick edit of your e-mail can help with this. Re-read your message, ask yourself if it says what you need to say and see if anything can be removed. It doesn’t have to be a difficult or lengthy process, just a quick once over before you hit “send”.

Sign your e-mail. At the very least your name if the person you’re e-mailing doesn’t know you well. I get many e-mails from people who’s e-mail address is funky, something like purplebeast543@something.com, and it makes for an awkward response if I don’t know their name.

For most business related e-mail, it’s a good idea to include a signature that identifies you by name, title and who your working for. At least one way to contact you is important as well.

Make your e-mails personal. You’ll want to make the person you’re talking with feel important and that you’re attention, as far as this e-mail goes, is about them.

Call them by name. Be friendly, yet business-like. Don’t use cookie cutter wording and whatever you do, don’t cut and paste from another e-mail.

Keep it clean. And by clean I mean nicely formated and clutter-free. There can be a temptation to over-design your e-mails. Especially when it comes to a signature block. This is ok as long as it doesn’t go over board with colorful backgrounds or clashing fonts. Make sure the format is one that is easy on the eye and easy to read.

When in doubt, avoid special formatting all together.

The better you know someone, the less you need to worry about some of this stuff. I think one of the reasons people have problems with e-mail is a simple lack of time. So, when you’re conversing with a business associate that you know pretty well, you can let some things slide. For example; your typos might be less evident and you can probably forgo the signature once they’re used to getting e-mails from you.

Most of these tips are more important for people you have a formal relationship with and I know that when doing business over the Web (via e-mail) you can switch to a casual business relationship really quick. Which is great. It fosters more open communication and takes less time. Just remember that these things can still help, and don’t let everything slide.

Die Dulci Fruere