Email
Etiquette Rules
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Below we list some of Email Etiquette Rules that we think are helpfull in
writting professinal emails. Although some of the requirements might differ
depending upon your business prospective.
1. Be concise and to the point
Do not make an e-mail longer than it needs to be. Remember that reading an
e-mail is harder than reading printed communications and a long e-mail can be
very discouraging to read.
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2. Answer all questions, and pre-empt further
questions
An email reply must answer all questions, and pre-empt further questions – If
you do not answer all the questions in the original email, you will receive
further e-mails regarding the unanswered questions, which will not only waste
your time and your customer’s time but also cause considerable frustration.
Moreover, if you are able to pre-empt relevant questions, your customer will be
grateful and impressed with your efficient and thoughtful customer service.
Imagine for instance that a customer sends you an email asking which credit
cards you accept. Instead of just listing the credit card types, you can guess
that their next question will be about how they can order, so you also include
some order information and a URL to your order page. Customers will definitely
appreciate this.
3. Use proper spelling, grammar &
punctuation
This is not only important because improper spelling, grammar and punctuation
give a bad impression of your company, it is also important for conveying the
message properly. E-mails with no full stops or commas are difficult to read
and can sometimes even change the meaning of the text. And, if your program has
a spell checking option, why not use it?
4. Make it personal
Not only should the e-mail be personally addressed, it should also include
personal i.e. customized content. For this reason auto replies are usually not
very effective. However, templates can be used effectively in this way, see
next tip.
5. Use templates for frequently used responses
Some questions you get over and over again, such as directions to your office
or how to subscribe to your newsletter. Save these texts as response templates
and paste these into your message when you need them. You can save your
templates in a Word document, or use pre-formatted emails. Even better is a
tool such as ReplyMate for Outlook (allows you to use 10 templates for free).
6. Answer swiftly
Customers send an e-mail because they wish to receive a quick response. If they
did not want a quick response they would send a letter or a fax. Therefore,
each e-mail should be replied to within at least 24 hours, and preferably
within the same working day. If the email is complicated, just send an email
back saying that you have received it and that you will get back to them. This
will put the customer's mind at rest and usually customers will then be very
patient!
7. Do not attach unnecessary files
By sending large attachments you can annoy customers and even bring down their
e-mail system. Wherever possible try to compress attachments and only send
attachments when they are productive. Moreover, you need to have a good virus
scanner in place since your customers will not be very happy if you send them
documents full of viruses!
8. Use proper structure & layout
Since reading from a screen is more difficult than reading from paper, the
structure and lay out is very important for e-mail messages. Use short
paragraphs and blank lines between each paragraph. When making points, number
them or mark each point as separate to keep the overview.
9. Do not overuse the high priority option
We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf. If you overuse the high
priority option, it will lose its function when you really need it. Moreover,
even if a mail has high priority, your message will come across as slightly
aggressive if you flag it as 'high priority'.
10. Do not write in CAPITALS
IF YOU WRITE IN CAPITALS IT SEEMS AS IF YOU ARE SHOUTING. This can be highly
annoying and might trigger an unwanted response in the form of a flame mail.
Therefore, try not to send any email text in capitals
11. Don't leave out the message thread
When you reply to an email, you must include the original mail in your reply,
in other words click 'Reply', instead of 'New Mail'. Some people say that you
must remove the previous message since this has already been sent and is
therefore unnecessary. However, I could not agree less. If you receive many
emails you obviously cannot remember each individual email. This means that a
'threadless email' will not provide enough information and you will have to
spend a frustratingly long time to find out the context of the email in order
to deal with it. Leaving the thread might take a fraction longer in download
time, but it will save the recipient much more time and frustration in looking
for the related emails in their inbox!
12. Add disclaimers to your emails
It is important to add disclaimers to your internal and external mails, since
this can help protect your company from liability. Consider the following
scenario: an employee accidentally forwards a virus to a customer by email. The
customer decides to sue your company for damages. If you add a disclaimer at
the bottom of every external mail, saying that the recipient must check each
email for viruses and that it cannot be held liable for any transmitted
viruses, this will surely be of help to you in court (read more about email
disclaimers). Another example: an employee sues the company for allowing a
racist email to circulate the office. If your company has an email policy in
place and adds an email disclaimer to every mail that states that employees are
expressly required not to make defamatory statements, you have a good case of
proving that the company did everything it could to prevent offensive emails.
13. Read the email before you send it
A lot of people don't bother to read an email before they send it out, as can
be seen from the many spelling and grammar mistakes contained in emails. Apart
from this, reading your email through the eyes of the recipient will help you
send a more effective message and avoid misunderstandings and inappropriate
comments.
14. Do not overuse Reply to All
Only use Reply to All if you really need your message to be seen by each person
who received the original message.
15. Mailings > use the Bcc: field or do a
mail merge
When sending an email mailing, some people place all the email addresses in the
To: field. There are two drawbacks to this practice:
(1) the recipient knows that you have sent the same message to a large number
of recipients, and
(2) you are publicizing someone else's email address without their permission.
One way to get round this is to place all addresses in the Bcc: field.However,
the recipient will only see the address from the To: field in their email, so
if this was empty, the To: field will be blank and this might look like
spamming. You could include the mailing list email address in the To: field, or
even better, if you have Microsoft Outlook and Word you can do a mail merge and
create one message for each recipient. A mail merge also allows you to use
fields in the message so that you can for instance address each recipient
personally. For more information on how to do a Word mail merge, consult the
Help in Word.
16. Take care with abbreviations and emoticons
In business emails, try not to use abbreviations such as BTW (by the way) and
LOL (laugh out loud). The recipient might not be aware of the meanings of the
abbreviations and in business emails these are generally not appropriate. The
same goes for emoticons, such as the smiley :-). If you are not sure whether
your recipient knows what it means, it is better not to use it.
Continued...
source www.emailreplies.com