Email Basics and Netiquette by A.L Haines The new way we communicate, electronically, still has a few rules that keep our Manners in check. It's critical to have good email etiquette to promote online communication. Personal styles may differ, but there are general rules that apply in most situations. Business Communication
Generally, business email should mirror your business correspondence in style, correctness and formality. Use a salutation or greeting, with the recipient's title (Mr., Ms., Dr.), as you would in a formal business letter. Use the person's first name if you would normally write to that person on a first name basis. Otherwise, use the person's last name. Keep it simple!! Messages should be concise and to the point. The goal is to be brief, and effective communication that doesn't waste the recipient's time is important to THEM. (People receive hundreds of email messages every day! ....and they get grumpy too). Too Much Punctuation…
Don't get caught up in punctuation, especially excessive punctuation. You'll see lots of email messages where people put a 1/2 dozen exclamation points at the end of a sentence for added visual emphasis. Why????? If something is important it should be in your text, not in your punctuation. Wrap It Keep the number of characters per line below 80, with 60 characters being a good all around line size. Some email programs don't handle longer text well and don't have word wrap. Some recent email packages have a built-in feature that automatically word-wraps at a specified character limit so the problem may be essentially solved, but if your software does not support this feature, you'll need to remember to use the Enter key. Formatting
Formatting your text is not the goal - plain text is it where it's at. Period. Trying to include fancy fonts only creates headaches for you and problems will arise. Count on it. There are lots of email clients that can't handle messages in these new formats. The message will be received as utter gibberish and may even crash the recipients email client. Think how impressed would you be...... Your goal is communication, not style. But, if you know your recipient's email client has HTML capabilities, you can be as fancy as you want (especially with internet marketing materials). If you're trying to grow your business, it's best to be up there on the top with the latest technology. So,
1. Send text email to people who receive text,
2. AOL to people with AOL.
3. HTML to people who can receive HTML. Abbreviations
Abbreviation usage is quite rampant with email. In our quest to save keystrokes, we've all moreoften than not, traded clarity for confusion. Never even knew it was happening did you? We recommend using only abbreviations that are already common to the English language. Anything more than that is only confusing your email recipient. Since there's no visual or auditory cues with email, users have come up with something called "smilies" or "emoticons." They are simple strings of characters that are interspersed in the email text to convey the writer's emotions & feelings on the subject. The most common example is :-).
(Turn your head to the left and you should see a happy face)
A wink is ;-). Neutral or indifferent is :-|.
There are others, but you get the idea. They are typically found at the end of sentences and will usually refer back to the prior statement. These should be used sparingly and are NOT appropriate for formal business correspondence.
Signatures
In a letter or other paper document, it's typical to close with a name, title, organization and so leave room for a signature. Since we don't yet sign emails with an actual signature (but will soon, with the official approval of digital signature legal standing), senders often include name, title and organization but leave no signature space. It's also polite to include your contact info beneath the name of the organization. Signature files can also be an effective means to get a quick offer in to your correspondence. One rule you should follow is keeping it to 3-4 lines of text and an address (url/email) Keep Threads Connected
Once you send that first email, you will probably get a response. If you want to reply to that response, the inappropriate thing to do is to start a new email message. This breaks the link (called a "thread") between the original message and your soon-to-be-created response. Without the link, it can be difficult for the users on each end to follow the sequence of messages, especially after several exchanges. This becomes an even larger problem when your dealing with newsgroups where several people may be replying to messages and trying to follow the thread of exchanged information. The correct thing to do is to reply, which is essentially the same thing as creating a new message but maintains the thread content. Quotes
Nothing is more wasteful than to reply to an email by including a complete copy of the original with the words "I agree" or "Ditto" at the bottom. What's the point? The correct way of replying is to use quoting. The key with quoting is to include enough material in the quote so that it will be relevant to the recipient and to leave out the other (50? 100?) lines that aren't even relevant to your response. (Lack of) Privacy
Remember: Although efforts might be made by some organizations to respect email privacy, generally it is not a private medium. Email can be monitored and read in a variety of contexts, and you may also accidentally send or receive an email meant for someone else. In addition, hackers can access your email if they try hard enough. No security measures are completely effective, so it's best to bear in mind the potentially public nature of the correspondence you create on email. Ask around at the office and you will find everyone has a story about an embarrassing correspondence made public. Flames
To be "flamed" means that you've sent an email to a person that has caused him or her to respond with angry words. It's basically a verbal attack in electronic form. In the email arena, you can never predict what effect your words or an unexpected email will have on the recipient, and the lack of verbal nuances and cues (voice tone, sighs, pauses) can easily leads to hassle (or a possible nightmare) The best response to being flamed is no response at all, otherwise the flaming escalates, just like a real fire! Spam - ungodly meat byproduct??
Spam is the "trash" of electronic marketing; message boards or opt-in lists are considered "Permission Marketing" and becoming quite popular. It is definitely going to put you in the Email Etiquette Dance Corner, and your messages could accidently be perceived as spam. One solution is to create a permission-based club or group that gives consumers control over whether to receive your emails or not while you demonstrate your respect for their privacy. For correspondence that is in the gray area between spam and non-spam (such as initial contact), you should include a disclaimer that provides opt-out and acknowledges your desire to be spam-free at the same time. For example, if you're sending an initial contact email to a newsgroup or message board, you could put something like the following in your post or in your signature:
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"If you think this email content is not appropriate for this newsgroup, please send notification to the email address mailto:you@y..."
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Good luck, thanks for reading this far and I hope you find these tips useful.
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A.L Haines is the editor and publisher for several useful online Internet Marketing newsletters. How to get 250,000 FREE classified ads http://swap.at/TheSwapShop.com |