E for E-mail Etiquette and Efficiency

The fact is that integrating solid e-mail etiquette skills in your day to day business e-mail activities will help to make you a more efficient communicator. Those who you e-mail regularly will appreciate these efforts as you will help to make doing business with you easier and them more efficient as well.

I thought about this today as I was answering my overflowing inbox where I found e-mails that made replying difficult, requests that had already been answered asking where my answers were and inquiries that were vague at best. This caused me to have to dig out my previous replies and resend them to the same individuals, ask questions for information to better clarify the request so I could answer with confidence added with the chore of having to weed through previous back and forth to figure out what was new that I was supposed to respond to.

These type of e-mails took more of my time to have to respond to and made me inefficient. As is usually the case, I thought “this will make a great topic for Business E-mail Etiquette!” Here are the issues that I took note of today that made both sides spend more time than necessary with their e-mail communications — all of which can easily be resolved with minuscule effort.

1. Before responding to a e-mail, order your e-mails by Sender. This will help you see any subsequent e-mails on the same topic that you can then easily combine into just one e-mail reply. Minimizing the number of e-mails is a benefit to everyone involved.
2. On that same note, consolidate your thoughts and put them in one e-mail using a bulleted list as I am doing here. Sending numerous e-mails with just one thought, concern or question takes unnecessary time for the Sender to send and the Recipient to have to weed through.
3. Down-editing your replies is the sign of a tech savvy skilled communicator. Always remove what is no longer necessary to the conversation. Only leave what you are specifically replying to so the person on the other side knows what your comments correspond to. To have to review an entire email looking for the one spot where you inserted a “no” as your answer reflects a lack of concern for the time of the person you are communicating with.
4. Before assuming that a request was not acknowledged or processed, check your inbox, trash or spam folders to make sure that you did not in fact receive the desired response or information before you send off an accusatory follow-up. Add important contacts to your address book or whitelist to ensure your contact’s e-mails can get through any filtering your software may have in place.
5. When making an request, be sure to do your best to include all the possible information the other side will need to assist you. The more time you take to provide all the necessary details and information that the other side will need to respond to your request, the faster you will receive the response you desire.

These are just the 5 things that stuck out today that caused me lost time and efficiency. Clearly Business E-mail Etiquette serves to assist all involved in using the least amount of time tapping away at these keyboards thereby freeing us all up to have more time to do our jobs and run our businesses.

What can those you communicate with do to help make you more efficient?

Some More Info for You:

1. E-mail Etiquette Includes Reading
2. Unrealistic Response Expectations
3. “Attract More Bees with Honey” with E-mail Courtesies
4. Refusing E-mail Return Receipts (RR)
5. No E-mail Etiquette; No Response?