Sep 22, 2017
I'm sure you've been on the receiving end of a few cringe-worthy emails that violate your email etiquette terms. Perhaps you've even uttered a few choice words about the sender. Here are 6 email habits to improve productivity.
Length of the email – The email written should always contain appropriate number of words. Give the information that needs to be conveyed and that’s it. Recipients usually skip reading complete text when they see it’s too lengthy. Thus, sometimes they often miss the facts that are necessary for work. Also if a question is being asked in the message, never reply to it in just one word. It leaves a rude impression of yours on the receiver’s end. Answer the questions asked in polite, meaningful sentence.
Subject line – Subject line is to convey the purpose of the email. It is suggested to keep the subject line compact and finish it off in not more than seven to eight words. Writing a long subject line makes no sense as you can add the details in the content of the email. On the other hand, never leave the subject line empty. Professionals have priorities and value their time. So, it often annoy them when they find the subject line empty and had to open and read whole of the message to know its purpose.
Urgent messages that aren’t urgent – Never send messages with urgent tags that are not really urgent. People value their time a lot more than you think and usually have a schedule for work. Indulging them to prioritize your work before theirs is not a good idea. May be twice you’ll be lucky enough to get your work done at the first place, but once they find out the real urgency of email you might even get no reply from receiver’s end even after the deadline. Thus, it is suggested to give recipient’s their own time to handle your email as it will result in everyone’s work done on time.
CC’ing without permission– Always take the approval from the people to disclose the information with others or not. Sharing information that's not yours to share is annoying. Whether you're cc'ing a client on an email where your boss said something about them or including a co-worker on an email chain where another co-worker shares personal information, not everyone likes to have someone else decide to cc someone without taking their permission.
Email address – Naming your email address with anything like cutest, sexy, nonsensical or vulgar will set a negative tone from the get-go, at workplace. Receiver’s may end up making a different opinion of yours on seeing email addresses like ‘cutestmichael@xyz.com’ etc. keep your email ids as simple as possible for professional purposes.
Timing of the email – Sometimes, people get up in the middle of night and feel extremely productive. But, it is highly recommended to avoid mailing someone at 3am or so. Instead, create the email and save it in drafts for sending it later, on appropriate time.