Emails. Love them or hate them, they are a regular part of most of our lives.
For those of us with desk jobs, the sheer volume of emails we receive every day can at times be overwhelming. I’m sure we have also all had the experience of firing off an email, only to have it get lost in the recipients inbox.
How can you make sure that your email doesn’t become a casualty of the email war and go MIA? Make it as easy on the recipient as possible.
Subject line
Give an accurate description of the topic of the email. Ambiguous subject lines in emails are annoying and waste your readers time. So forget:
Or any other such variations that tell the reader nothing. Make it a subject line that at a glance will let them know what the email is about. Some examples:
First Paragraph
Get to the point. Don’t spend half the email in background information and leading up to your point. If there are any action items, they shouldn’t be buried in the email or they will be missed.
Rather than this:
Hi Jane,
As you are probably well aware, ACME Company has been dragging their feet in supplying us with the paperwork we needed to progress on their account. I tried five times to get the information from them, first by email and then later on in the month, I tried phoning them.
Although they kept saying they would supply us with the information, it wasn’t until Mike the General Manager contacted them that they finally got it for us.
Because it has taken so long, we are now in a real rush to get the income statement done up. Can you provide them for us as soon as possible?
Try this:
Hi Jane,
Can you provide me with the income statement for ACME Company as soon as possible? Although they didn’t provide us with the necessary paperwork on time, they are now in a hurry to get moving on things.
In the busy workplace most of us function in, Jane is scanning the first example and thinking to herself “get to the point already, what do you want from me? I wonder if I am going to get a chance to grab some lunch today? Did I leave the iron on?”
Urgent Status!!!
Oh yes, the good old red exclamation point. Bound to grab people’s attention and make them realize that this is an email they should give all their attention. Right? Uh-huh.
Much like exclamations in advertising copy, the little red one in emails have been overdone to the point of meaninglessness. If everything is urgent, which is most urgent?
My advice is to try and never use them unless it is truly urgent. If, after careful thought you realize that it is indeed urgent and worthy of the exclamation point, pick up the phone and call them instead.
CCs
CCs sort of go hand-in-hand with the urgent status. If you want people to pay attention to what you have to say in your email, then they need to know that if you send them one, it is worth reading. So stop ccing everyone and their dog on your emails. Yes, it is important to keep people in the loop, but we all have enough emails to deal with without being copied on emails that we have very little interest in.
A close relative to this issue is the “reply to all” button. If everyone needs to know your response, fine. But if you hit “reply to all” and send an email that says “Thanks” you will be at the mercy of the rabid email gods. And you will deserve all they can dish out.
These are some tips for making your emails as user friendly as possible. Do you have any others that have worked well for you?
