Better emails

Here are some useful tips for writing emails that should be in every company’s handbook:

1. Use the subject line to indicate what the email is about. For example, if the email describes a customer who is having a problem, say “Customer having a problem”, not just “customer” or “rick”

2. Don’t use the subject line as the body of your message. Even if your message is short, like “look at this link”, it will not hurt to put “a link for you to look at” in the subject line, and then also “Look at this link” in the body. It is not being redundant, it’s being more clear.

3. In addition to #2, even if your message is short, please try to use more than one sentence to phrase what it is that you want. You may be immersed in some pressing issue, but chances are whoever reads your email will have no idea what you were doing when you wrote the email. Even if you are sure that the person receiving your email will know what you are talking about, take a little extra time to set the stage for your message (there is a good example below). For instance, start your email with “As you may recall, I am working on XYZ, and you had asked me to ABC…” so your audience does not grind any gears trying to wrap their minds around what you are trying to say.

4. Read your email at least once before you send it. Simple mistakes can make your email difficult to understand. For instance, the sentence “I need to know what data we have free for joe” will make no sense to your reader simply because you typed “data” when you should have written “date”.

5. Read your email again before you send it. Put yourself in the place of the reader. Take ten seconds to imagine whether or not your reader will understand what “codes did not working for her that we have it for 12” means.

6. Make sure your spell checker is set to automatic, and always spell-check before you send. Spell checking is important, not because misspelled words make you look bad, but very often misspelled words can make your email impossible to understand. While a spell checker would not have caught #4, it would instantly fix “it sounds more liekt he center dropped us via 3-way”.

7. Please, please don’t forward someone else’s email as an attachment without explaining why you forwarded it. If you must forward an email as an attachment, then supply a brief note of explanation, such as “This is an email I received from Joe, and I think he intended to CC you on it as well”. If possible, forward the body of Joe’s email as part of your message, not as an attached file. It is easy to Copy and Paste other people’s emails. Tip: Ctrl-A (select all) Ctrl-C (copy) Ctrl-P (paste).

8. When someone sends you a three sentence email, read all three sentences. The first sentence does not always summarize the next two. Also, be sure to read the entire email before responding, because you might be responding with a question that is already answered in the email you are responding to. For example, an email may say “I couldn’t do X. So I did Y. Then I did X.” and you may look silly if you reply with “so X didn’t get done????”

9. When you add a new recipient to an email that has gone back and forth between parties several times already, please try to avoid requiring that the new recipient read the entire thread all the way to the end to figure out what is going on. For example, you could summarize the thread. Copy and Paste works well here too. Again, don’t be afraid of being too redundant. Redundancy is not a weakness. Redundancy is being more clear.

10. If there is an issue that is repeating itself, sometimes it’s okay to assume that your reader is already looking at that page, however more often than not, a simple message like “still not working” requires a long moment of sleuthing on the part of your reader to figure out what you are talking about.

11. If you have a ton of emails to go through, read the newest ones first. Chances are, many of the newer ones cancel out some of the older ones.

12. Don’t use proprietary expressions or abbreviations unless you are very sure that the reader is up to speed on them as well. For example, we have many common words in our business that most people will not understand without additional clarification, such as “ver”, “pid”, “auth”, “dnis”, and recently the people upstairs invented the expression “blind pid” that was not understood by me until two phone calls were made.

13. Finally, here is an example of a very nice email:

From: Amy

Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 9:59 AM

To: 'Admin' Subject: 3363

Hi erik,

On the 3363, the back log that we had to flush in from date 10-30, 10-31 and 11-01 and 11-02 only the 0 is showing so the audios are not pulling up. Can you make the 99’s show so that when I pull them in verifier the audio will come up. I am going to work on the 3rd and 4th (they have the 99’s)

Thanks,

Amy

While the subject line was a little brief, it had the most important thing in it, the customer ID. Then she has the courtesy to say “Hi” followed by her issue. The paragraph begins with a little background on the problem, putting all of the props on the stage by referring to the dates, what we were doing, and referring to the customer ID a second time in case I didn’t look at the subject line. Then she states the problem. Then she states why this is a problem. Then she states what she would like me to do about it, and then what she is going to be doing in the mean time. This is only two sentences, but it couldn’t be more clear on any level. She also says thanks.
Hope this helps.