Call 01202 43 43 40
Email info@mesmo.co.uk
Here are the articles and blogs which caught our attention in October.
What have we missed. What did you read which caught you eye?
Tags: bcc, Clive Thomson, cyber crime, cybercrime, Debrett's, email culture, email etiquette, email overload, Michael Einstein, Ponemon
Traveling around the D-Day beaches made me pause for thought about just how different the records would have been if electronic records (emails etc) had been kept rather than traditional pen and paper? Would many of us still treasure troves of beautiful love letters written by our parents (and grandparents) such as Janie Emaus discovered. Would J. D. Salinger have completed ‘Catcher in the Rye’ had he not carried the manuscript in his backpack?
Looking at the beaches and conditions which our troops braved, made me wonder how well a mobile device like an iphone would have endured. After all there were no sockets for recharging such devices then, no wifi (or 3G to send our messages) and wet devices as we all know are prone to failure. Whereas pen and paper can be used anywhere and in the most adverse weather (witness Scott’s diaries).
With pen and paper whether to write a love letter, diary, one feels compelled to think before hitting the paper after all who wants to send a document with lots of crossing outs. Moreover, it is very much more personal and definitely one to one unless of course you send carbon copies. Additionally there is the whole art of graphology and what your writing says about your character. All this is missing from email and texts.
Yes, clearly electronic messages can be preserved but somehow an email does not feel as interesting as a well preserved letter (document). Emails lack the tactile attributes which certainly for me make old letters look and feel so interesting.
With email of course there is always the danger of sending your love letter to the wrong person and ending up on gardening leave as has happened to many a person.
Whilst many organisations are working hard at creating paperless offices, for myself and many others, pen and paper still have a role and especially for the more emotional communications such as love letters, diaries and thank you notes to someone who has gone the extra mile.
Indeed the fountain pen is becoming as much a status symbol as the latest electronic devices: Mont Blanc has just re-released the original Meisterstück 149 which has been used at one time or another by many leaders from J.F. Kennedy to Barack Obama.
Even in meetings I confess to working with a fountain pen and beautiful leather bound notebook from BomoArt. It does not need any electricity (or wifi), it works every time I open it, is often quicker to find jottings in than on my ipad, and there is no chance of being distracted by seeing new emails! And it makes me stand out from the crowd. Call me old fashioned, but I feel as efficient as all my colleagues.
Tags: Bomo Art, D-Day, email etiquette, Janie Emaus, Mont Blanc Meisterstück, pen and paper
A recurrent question with clients has been how much information to include in your email signature block (from company logos and awards to the full postal address).
Recently I received an email where the logos and awards included in the signature block amounted to nearly 35KB which was more than both the content and the attached Word file. Three emails like this and that’s a third of a MB of unwanted storage space. I diligently deleted all the offending images in order to keep my inbox slim. Overweight email signature blocks are one of my pet peeves!
What constitutes good email etiquette for an email signature block? We are all looking to create a professional image which makes our email stand out in an ever crowded inbox. Including logos in an email means that you can:
• Impress clients with your awards;
• Reinforce your brand logo.
However, the downsides are that such images:
• Add to the size of the email and hence take up more storage space.
• Mean the email takes longer to download (as its bigger than it needs to be and not everyone has access to superfast broadband).
• Are often seen as spam and cause important emails to be trapped and quarantined.
• Not always rendered properly and can look naff (given the range of devices people use to read their email).
The other aspect of the email signature block is how much information to include. My other pet peeve is an email where the contact information is longer than the message itself. One 11 line email had a 23 line block as the sign off (person’s title full contact details etc) and it is on every email entry. How to annoy the recipient very quickly.
Always include as a minimum a contact phone number. After three rounds of email ping-pong, the other person might want to phone you. They too are time poor and if they cannot see a phone number quickly and easily, they will default to email which is often unproductive for everyone (and especially if building a new relationship is involved).
Conversely, not everyone needs all your contact details ie address, fax, mobile etc. So don’t clutter up the email with unnecessary verbiage. Be selective. As default, use the minimum (ie name and phone number) and only insert your full details when asked.
Small is beautiful for email and is the best form of email etiquette. This means the minimum of size and content. A good website, not an email is the place to project your corporate image, company values etc and full postal address.
For more on corporate email etiquette and especially how to close an email see previous blogs and of course ‘Brilliant Email’. If you still have any questions and need help, call us and ask about our Brilliant Email masterclasses.
What is your pet peeve?
Tags: corporate email etiquette, email best practice, email etiquette, Email signature block, Outlook
In the second part of our discussions, David Grossman talked through key ways to improve email communications, both in terms of how and what your write (email etiquette) and making you email software work for you. All of this will again help you keep a clean inbox (and maybe even an empty inbox).
Monica: Given that email is an effective communications tool – how can we make better use of it?
David: Use email only when it’s the most appropriate vehicle for your communication. These situations include when you need to:
Additionally, to keep your inbox clean, consider these strategies, along with the many others that were shared this week:
As you experiment with what works for you, you’ll begin to create new habits that will tame the email monster.
Click here to benchmark your email etiquette using Mesmo Consultancy’s free on-line tools. To gauge how well you use Outlook click here.
In part three David talks about how to improve the organisational email culture.
David Grossman, ABC, APR, Fellow PRSA helps leaders drive productivity and get the results they want through authentic and courageous leadership communication, a sought-after speaker and advisor to Fortune 500 leaders. A two-time author, David is CEO of The Grossman Group, an award-winning Chicago-based strategic leadership development and internal communication consultancy; clients include: DuPont Pioneer, Lockheed Martin, McDonald’s, Motel 6 and Tyco, to name a few.
Tags: Clean Inbox, clean out your inbox week, David Grossman, email etiquette, Mesmo Consultancy, The Grossman Group
What does bad email etiquette cost you? This question was prompted by the wonderful story yesterday of a French Café who charge polite customers less for coffee. This generated a request from BBC Radio Solent’s Julian Clegg to talk about whether or not manners maketh man. (Interestingly, a quote from Willian Wykeham Bishop of Winchester around 1366)
Coincidentally, yesterday too I was asked if it was acceptable to reply to an internal email without including a salutation. All Mesmo Consultancy’s research shows that if you add a salutation and a few polite words you are more likely to receive a reply from the other person than an email with just a one line question. For example ‘ Please can you let me have the sales figures. Thanks’ will engage the other person more than the bald statement ‘Let me have the sales figures’.
This is perhaps not surprising in the digital age where physical interactions are on the decline and we come to rely increasingly on digital interaction. How we write emails and social media posts is our ‘e-dress code’. It portrays a picture of you for better or worse.
Email etiquette which Mesmo Consultancy finds conveys a bad image include:
In the lean world of business, we need to draw out the best in the people with whom we work. Displaying arrogance in our emails and social media posts in not an option. Moreover in such a noisy world we also need both to make ourselves stand out and find ways to work with those who prefer ‘Quiet’. Good email etiquette can help. Good email etiquette costs you nothing (well maybe a few seconds more to write the email) but helps you gain friends rather than enemies.
Use our free on-line ‘Email Etiquette’ benchmarking tool to see what image you create and how well you engage through email with others. Still need some help than ask us about how our corporate email etiquette training which has helped others can help you win more business.
Tags: BBC Radio Solent, corporate email etiquette, email et, email etiquette, email salutations, Julian Clegg, Mesmo Consultancy
