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Top tips from Mesmo Consultancy (and Associates) on how to save time and improve business and personal performance by ‘Taking Control of your Inbox’ and using proper business email etiquette.
By email (as the sender), how long do you have to make an impression on the recipient? Maximum, five seconds, before they form an opinion of you (the sender), for better or worse. That goes for every aspect of business be it internal and external communications, eg job applications, journalists, prospects, etc. Often it’s for worse. Stefan Stern’s article ‘Is the vehicle registered in your name‘ prompted me to reflect on the current state of email etiquette or rather lack of it.
How you open, close and construct an email is your email dress code. Sloppy email, sloppy you. Professional email and it makes one feel I’d like to do business with this person. The way an email is framed can make or break a business relationship.
Let us not forget that for most businesses an email is still a formal communication. Indeed, it bears your business’s/organisation’s name, not to mention your own name.
Yet, when was the last time you had any email etiquette training? Never. You are not alone. Here is the most commonly and frequently used business communications tool and yet our surveys show that less than 30% of business people are ever given any guidelines on what is acceptable and what is not. In part of course the standard of today’s email etiquette is also a reflection of the appalling standard of school teaching. But that’s another story.
For example what guidelines are there in your organisation/business on:
These are some of the items covered in this week’s blogs.
Meanwhile, please feel free to use my Email Etiquette Checklist to audit a few of the emails you recently sent.
Tags: email etiquette, email management, Email training
One of the recurrent questions last week was ‘how do we manage efficiently a team in box to make sure all emails are answered once and once only and tracked’ (eg information@, sales @, project@ and even ‘my manager’s inbox’)?
You need to decide on some simple processes. First, who ultimately owns and manages the mailbox, in terms of sorting, assigning and as appropriate deleting the rubbish. Second, agree a process for handling the incoming emails which shows clearly the priorities and who is handling the email, eg flags, folders, colours etc. Third check that all the users have an adequate level of Email (Outlook) IT Fitness (ie skills to use the software) and guidelines on which to make decisions about how to process and email.
Without a robust and clear process in place there is a high risk that important emails will be missed and possibly with significant costs to the business.
Do you manage a team mailbox? What guidelines do you have in place?
Tags: email management, email overload, Outlook IT Fitness, Team inbox
When was the last time you were trained to use email and your email software, eg Outlook, Notes, Gmail Priority Inbox etc? Never. Once maybe years ago and since then the software has been upgraded several times. You are not alone.
Some would say how to use the software is obvious but I disagree. One hours training is worth at least five hours extra productivity. Email is one it not the most used business tool. Yet few have ever been shown how to use the software properly, let alone any email best practice, email etiquette and techniques to manage email overload.
Most email software contains a wealth of functions to help you save time. For example, rules (filters), colour (categories) to highlight key incoming emails, the facility to create templates of re-usable text, keyboard shortcut keys etc. Yet when I run workshops and coach clients it never ceases to amaze me how few people know how to use these functions.
You can use my Outlook IT Fitness Check to audit your level of skills. For non-Outlook users, it will at least highlight what functions might also be buried in your software.
What’s your favorite software time saver?
Tags: email etiquette, Email training, Outlook IT Fitness
Do you realise how much you reveal in your Out-of-Office message? Of the 135 recent Out-of-Office Message, six percent were past their sell by date which suggest a lack of attention to detail on the recipients part. Fifteen percent gave away information about clients and projects handled by the organisation, about twenty percent were insecure and left the person open to cyber crime and the rest were fine.
What makes a good safe and secure Out-of-Office message? Indeed why bother to pay attention to what your message says? A simple message is best which just states that you are not in the office and gives one point of contact in the event of an emergency. Any more (eg you are on holiday, other projects you are handling etc) and you leave yourself and the organsiation open to a breach of security and confidentiality.
It would not take a cyber criminal ten minutes to find out where you live and bing – burglary.
Every email from you conveys and creates an image about you in the recipient’s mind. A careless, frivolous message can convey a sloppy, unprofessional image of you and a sloppy organisation.
Does your organisation provide adequate guidelines on the use of Out-of-Office messages? If so what?
Tags: email etiquette, email security, out-of-office messages
Its great to see so many people working to fight this new business disease ‘information/email overload’ which is draining our productivity. Jonathan Spira at Basex estimates that this disease is now costing US business at least $997 billion per year. For more and to see his new year’s resolutions see http://bit.ly/hq9FkO.
What are you doing to help stop the email overload pandemic spreading?
Tags: email overload, new year's resolutions