Claudia Raab's Blog

Emails are great and have triggered one of the biggest changes in business communication in the past two decades! Many business people ‘speak' to their clients, colleagues and suppliers mostly via email. They are fast, you can write and send them any time of the day without fearing they'll disturb the person adressed. Plus they are quick to write since they are much more informal than a proper paper letter!

Or are they not? Well, yes and no! There's a range of faux pas we can commit when being too informal. Here are a couple of tips if you want your email to be a success and show you've mastered the email etiquette:

• Start your emails with a greeting (Dear Chris, Hi Susan, etc.) and end with a sign-off. Even if you have a mail signature, make sure you add ‘Regards' or ‘Thanks' at the bottom and I suggest you still and your name - it's just much more personalised.
• Treat your email like a mini letter. Be sure to use correct grammar, punctuation and spelling rules you would in a letter, especially in an external email.
• Use the ‘Cc:' field and ‘Reply to All' sparingly. Only send emails to people who need them. We all get enough emails without inbox filler about things we're not really involved with or details we don't want to know. They are time robbers!
• Be careful to use the ‘high priority' option. If you overuse it, you'll get ignored when it really is urgent.
• Compress large attachments, and only send when they are necessary.
• Be selective about personal emails that you forward on to others.
• Be specific in the subject line. An email saying "Monday, May 25, Marketing Meeting Agenda" is much easier to recognise and find in a crowded inbox than one called "Meeting."
• If you have to respond to a confronting email, don't do it straight away. It's easier to write than to speak to someone face to face; you'll regret it! Take 10 minutes to do something else and let off some steam before replying.
• And don't forget that it's sometimes simply a nice chance and gesture to walk across the floor to speak to a colleague in person or pick up the phone - we are all humans and love a chat from time to time.