Knowing the email etiquette rules is vital because email writing still is the widely used communication method on the internet. Even with the existence of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, WeChat, the utility of emails can affect your professional and personal life. Whether we like it or not, using email is a significant factor in our life.
How Important Email Communication?
There are more than 244.5 million active email users in the united states. Sixty-three percent of them have only one email account, and six percent of them have four or more active email accounts, according to a study from Statista.
According to research from Adobe, American workers spend nearly five hours per day checking working emails (average three-plus hours a day) and personal emails (average two-plus hours a day).
Why Do We Need To Practice Email Etiquette?
According to the facts, email communication has a higher contribution to our professional and personal lives. Good communication habits can increase your public relations standards, and it can boost your confidence in professional communication.
Email etiquette rules can shine your email communication and will help to succeed in your professional life.
Using email etiquettes is not as hard as you think. Here ten effortless email etiquette rules that make your profession successful.
Here Are The 10 Effortless Email Etiquette Rules That Can Help Your Profession’s Success.
01). Don’t Miss The Subject Line.
The subject line of the email is a single line of text. The recipient can see your email when they receive your email in their inbox through the subject line.
You can often determine whether the email should open or send it straight to the trash by looking at this single line of text.
Using a correct subject line is a vital email etiquette rule that you need to follow. Your email subject line is the first thing that the recipient sees.
The excellent subject line offers a good impact on your recipient. You can use the subject line to give the main objective of the email. So, the subject line can induce the reader to open the email.
When you are writing a subject line, make it more definite and concise. Remember not to use generic words such as “hi, hi folks, hey, hello, colleagues, you must open this,” although you need it to be definite and concise.
Below are some examples of well-crafted subject lines;
- “Meeting on Wednesday.”
- “Meeting on 17th February.”
- “Investor’s Meeting.”
- “Mr. Sam’s Inquiry in Alibaba”
- “Suggestions for the Presentation.”
- “Quick questions about your proposal.”
- “Requested -your product name- Product catalog.”
The subject line of your email can reflect its content. More expert suggestions tell that you need to change the subject line as the conversation progresses.
02). Use Your Professional Email Address.
You may have both company and personal email addresses for you. But you need to use your company email address instead of the personal email address for the works relates to your company job.
Perhaps you may happen to use personal email for company-related works. It will help if you care when you are choosing the address. If the personal email address like this ” soccerlover@…” or “sweetgirl@…”, don’t use it.
You may be a self-employed person. If that is the fact, you need to be careful when you chose your email.
You can set up a business email on google as well. Try to use a separate account for your profession, and it will make your works easier.
03). Make Sure To Turn On “Undo.”
There is a possibility to leave an email from you to the wrong recipient. This situation can be a severe problem if the email is about a confidential matter in your workplace.
You cannot recall the email after you send it. But establishing email etiquette rules can save your company or your profession from these kinds of embarrassing situations.
But there is an option called “Undo” to help you with such a kind of situation.
But acknowledge that the web-based email addresses ending in @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, @live.com, or @msn.com do not have this option.
Gmail and Yahoo mail have an option called Undo that can delay the sending of the message. So, you get a few seconds to stop sending the email. The same option is available in outlook Windows software.
Note that this option is not available in default. You need to activate it from the email settings.
04) Be Cautious When You Hit The Reply-all Button.
Almost all email providers give the “Reply All” function to their users. You can use the “Reply All” button to reply to every person in the original message.
The “From,” “To,” and “CC” persons will receive your response when you push the Reply All button.
Experts say that “Do not use the reply all button unless you don’t know every person in the receivers list does need to know your reply.” They suggest you check all the persons on the list and reply to only those who require your answer.
People get annoyed when they receive large amounts of unnecessary emails every day. Unnecessary emails can result in receivers not open the email.
Imagine your superiors are being email copied from every one of their subordinates. Most of them even not open these copied emails.
But If you need to CC your colleagues or your managers or your subordinate, act according to the situation—respect their request.
Thoughtful reply email can save the time and space of most people. Email etiquette rules make things more orderly and simple in email communication in your workplace.
05). Think Twice Before Pressing “Forward.”
You can resend the email to a different email recipient by pressing the forward button. This option is available in most of the email providers.
You need to make sure that you are forwarding the right content to the correct recipients for the right reason. Read again what you will send and check whether this needed to be forward to the recipient.
Because some emails may contain personal details of the senders and some attachments, and most of them don’t want to expose their details to a third party by you.
If the email contains a lot of information about the discussion, you can start a new email instead of forwarding it.
06). Don’t Forget To Attach The Attachment.
Forgetting to attach the attachment also is a common mistake that can happen.
If you want to include a file in the email, please attach the relevant file before sending it. The best practice is to attach the file before composing the email.
Email etiquette rules can save you from this embarrassing mistake of forgetting to attach the file before sending the email.
Anyhow, if you forget, then you have to write another email saying, “Sorry, I forgot to attach the attachment.” and send the file with that email.
07) Perform Prompt Replying.
Most people, including you, do not like to wait for too much to have no reply from the email recipient.
Some emails require information that could take several days to collect. But, it not meant that you’re allowed to keep people without any answer until you find the details.
People know that some of their inquiries need time to answer, although you can tell them that you receive the email and get back to them after collecting the details.
Don’t forget to turn on automation replies when you are not available for days while unable to reply to them. Then people won’t expect a response from you, and they won’t get any misunderstand about you.
08). Make A Habit Of Replying To Emails.
It is a proper email etiquette rule if you can reply to all emails sent to you. But, Sending replies to all your emails can be a severe headache for you.
Though, you can send replies at least to the emails that require some answer. Don’t neglect emails, thinking that they are missing emails or not related to your subject.
Here two types of examples:
“I know you may be tight with works, but I think you don’t intend to send the above email to me. I wanted to inform it so that you can send it to the right email without further delay.”
“Unfortunately, we must inform you that at this time we cannot see a possible application of your proposals within our company. Should it change in the future, we will contact you.”
09) Professional Art Of Creating Content.
Content is the most crucial thing in your email writing because it reflects you and your company to the reader.
Anyone like to read content that is well crafted. It does not mean that you have to include cool fonts, colors, punctuations, or/and many other things in your emails.
Your emails should be readable for others to read.
Here are a few tips that make your email more attractive and readable
- Use one of these font types – Arial, Calibre, or Times New Roman (Choose only one from them),
- Use 10 or 12 points size fonts inside the email (Don’t use both sizes in the same email),
and
- Use black color for the fonts. It is the safest color that you can use.
If you want to use an exclamation point, use only one to announce your excitement.
10). Proofread Every Email Before Sending.
Any professional can make a mistake while writing an email. Your recipient may not see your blunder, and it won’t make any embracement.
But It is good to send emails without any blunder than sending hot-foot emails with mistakes.
You cannot only rely on grammatical checking. You have to be careful of grammar, tone, details, and everything you need to perfect.
Let’s Wrap All Together.
Writing a well professional email is not an impossible thing to do for anyone. Suppose you can prepare yourself to emulate the above email etiquette rules in your professional and personal life. Then anyone cannot stop you.
Do you have any previous unpleasant experiences due to knowing about email etiquette rules? Comment on your experiences and thoughts.
“Sharing knowledge will open the door to gain more knowledge.”
