23 Work Email Best Practices – Smart Rules of the Road
Image sourced by Lauren Mancke @laurenmancke
It finally happened!
The Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving, I was racing to clear my To Do List.
The week before, my client John had been laid off so I wanted to help him find a new position.
It turned out that two of my biggest clients happened to have open positions and asked me to send them resumes.
Bob is the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of one client and Andy owns the other client (company).
Truth be told, my work pace had been super-hectic for some two months and I was tired, drained. Especially going into Thanksgiving. I wanted to finish clearing my To Do List and get the last minute items my children had requested for the Thanksgiving feast.
Yep – I was multitasking. Which I can now comfortably report does not always work as planned.
I was on a Zoom call with a vendor. At the same time, I wrote a cover email to Andy, introducing John. I attached John’s resume to the email and hit send.
So far so good.
My Zoom call continued. . .
Then, I copied and pasted the body of the email I had sent to Andy into a fresh email for Bob. Good in theory.
I attached John’s resume and hit send to launch the email to Bob.
I returned to the Zoom call to focus on that.
Then, it dawned on me that in the email to Bob I may not have erased the text I sent to Andy. I opened my sent file and the email I had sent to Bob. I scrolled down. . .
UGH!
I had FAILED to take a minute to proofread the email to Bob. I had FAILED to delete the email string between Andy and me. So, Bob received my email exchange with Andy. I had copied all the text instead of just the intro paragraphs about John and his resume.
UGH! So Careless.
I was very embarrassed and concerned that I had tarnished my relationship with Bob.
Thankfully, I hadn’t disclosed any confidential information! That would have been really bad.
Immediately, I sent Bob an apology email.
A week went by. Two weeks. Radio silence. I emailed Bob once more on December 12th to update him on the status of two open projects. Radio silence again, which drives me crazy!
On December 13th, I decided to call him. Bob was glad to hear from me and made no mention of my faux pas. I didn’t bring up my mistake and kept the call positive and forward-looking.
Whew! I avoided the penalty box. On we go.
Would have been a Very Bad Day if I had to tell my colleague that I blew up a $1 million account.
Now, You can learn from my mistake and do better – email smarter and wiser.
Follow these 23 work email best practices to email smartly to succeed 10X, advance your career and save your hide:
For sensitive emails, cool off. Initiate a strategic cooling off period. Wait 24 hours before you hit send. After the break, maybe you’ll decide to delete the email altogether.
Be very wary of hitting Reply All instead of Reply. Many an email has gone wide. . . and caused a stir.
For friendly or collaborative business emails, after Dear ______, consider writing something like, “I hope you are well.” Or, “Hope you had a good weekend” or “Hope you had a nice holiday.”
Don’t send jokes via work email. Don’t email jokes!
Don’t forward jokes you receive in your company email.
For important emails, draft the email in Word. This makes it easier to edit your email and run the spell check and grammar check. Then copy and paste your final draft from Word into the body of the email.
Compose short paragraphs. I typically craft short paragraphs, sometimes only one sentence long. Short paragraphs make it easier for the recipient to read the email, especially when they use a smartphone. Yeah, I’m certain my High School English teacher would be very upset; too bad. The key is to do your best to get your email opened and read. Brief and concise wins!
Create subject lines that clearly communicate the email’s purpose. Keep your subject lines to 60 (sixty) characters or less. The count includes spaces (spacing) and punctuation too.
For recipients whose name is complicated to spell, copy the person’s email into the Dear _______ block. Then, erase the email and their last name. It can be very embarrassing to misspell a client or prospect’s name. Especially if you are contacting a recruiter to try to land a job.
Avoid ALL CAPS because that means you are screaming. Even though I have violated that rule above, for example with ‘FAILURE’ and ‘UGH’. Did the All Caps catch your attention?
Sometimes All Caps makes sense. But that’s mostly in sales letters or direct mail packages (advertisements).
Before you hit send, read your email one more time, maybe even twice. Proofread it very carefully. No matter how many times I may reread my email, I almost always find a stray word, a typo, a grammatical error, or an incorrect or incomplete thought.
Sometimes, I have used an incorrect word but spelled the incorrect word correctly. In these cases, spell check would not identify the word as incorrect.
Sometimes the grammar check might pick up the error but don’t rely on this. This is why it’s important to proofread your emails very carefully.
Sometimes, I will read my email out loud.
Every once in a while, I will ask a friend or colleague to read an important email.
Don’t enter the recipient’s name until the last minute. This will ensure that you don’t inadvertently send the email out before you’re good and ready.
For important emails, ‘carbon copy’ (cc) or ‘blind carbon copy’ (bcc) yourself. This way, you’ll know the email launched successfully. Although, the fact that you received your email does not guarantee that the intended recipient received your email. This also gives you a record of the email.
Print or save the email to PDF. This gives you a copy of what you sent.
Years ago, I worked with a guy named Tom. He used to give us pricing on certain consulting projects. The sales cycle was often long, sometimes six to nine months or even a year. We found that every now and again, Tom would forget the pricing he had sent us months earlier.
We began saving a PDF of his emails that contained his pricing.
When Tom asked us where the pricing came from, we would just email the PDF back to him [and laugh]. No more debates. Problem solved.
Keep your emails short – as short as possible. I find that 150 to 200 words or less is best. One hundred words is even better. People have short attention spans these days and most people read their email on a small smartphone screen. Make it Inviting for people to open your emails. Make it Easy for people to digest your emails.
Emojis and Emoticons. As a general rule, I don’t use emojis or emoticons. Although, sometimes if I am acquainted with the recipient, I’ll insert a smiley; which you can generate by typing a colon and then a ‘close parenthesis’. ☺
Close your emails with Sincerely, ___________; or another professional closing.
Signature Files – if you have more than one signature file, make sure you activate the correct one.
Send attachments only when necessary or important. Emails that contain attachments are much more likely to land in the spam folder. And often, the recipient may perceive that they have to set aside time to read the attachment.
I feel this way. In fact, unless I know the sender, I may not go back to the email for months or maybe ever. Then you lose out.
But, when I receive an email that’s contains 100 to 200 words, I can read that relatively easily and quickly.
Instead of including a brochure (attachment), describe the topic in the body of the email and mention that you have a brochure or additional information available. This helps keep the recipient’s inbox from getting full and increases the likelihood the recipient will read your email.
Check the spacing. Sometimes when you copy text from Word into the body of an email, the hard returns or lines between paragraphs get erased. If so, insert them again.
Run spell check one more time.
If you do send an email with an attachment, consider sending a separate email a few moments later without the attachment. Explain that you sent an email with an attachment and that if the person didn’t receive it, please check their spam folder.
A few years ago, I emailed an important proposal to an advertising agency and included our brochure. The proposal was time sensitive so I sent the second email.
Turned out that my initial email went right into the spam folder. Good thing I followed up!
Check attachments two or three times, to make sure you have attached the correct document.
In summary, SLOW Down. Take a deep breath and take your time. And finally. . .
IF in Doubt, don’t email it out!
When you implement these savvy work email tips and make them a habit, you increase the likelihood you will email smartly, protect yourself tenfold and succeed 10X! These techniques and tactics provide sound risk management and could help you avoid embarrassment and save your hide.
Very inexpensive protection.
Give it a whirl. And let us know how it goes.
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See you next week.
Arthur V.
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