Posted by Sundi Hayes in Remember back in high school when they taught the general guidelines of letter writing? There were rules about how many returns went between the sections, about the margins, about the greeting and the closing – Lord, they even told you where to put the date! Was that on the right or left?
After all these years some things don’t change. We have moved into a new mode of communication and there are plenty of general rules to go along with it. Since I’m past high school, even college, I can’t really say how well the rules are communicated. I can say though that it doesn’t make them any less important.
7 Ideas to Improve Email Communications
- No more than one scroll. Please. Seriously. This means the recipient reads the screen to the bottom and rolls the mouse wheel ONCE. If the end of the email isn’t in site you just lost a bunch of readers. Hey, I like to talk! I have some trouble following this rule. I’m also one of the people who won’t be patient enough for your point. Double-edged sword, I know.
- Bullet points are your friend. That saying…white space sells…isn’t necessarily about making money.
- Add punch to the subject line. Are you more likely to open an email titled “Monday meeting agenda items” or “Topics”?
- State you are on a wireless device, if that is the case. Concise answers can be interpretted as rude. Wireless devices and concise answers like to hang together. If you have a wireless device and send emails from it frequently, what you gain for answering quickly you loose for being perceived as rude.
- Check beyond the red squiggle. Auto check doesn’t catch everything. Spelling errors are distracting. Do you want your message to be lost because your reader only sees your errors? Or even worse, you actually loose your reader!
- Try an open-ended mix. Closing your email with open-ended questions – ones that require more than a Yes or No – will typically generate a response from your reader. Give it a try! Two way communication is far better than one way.
- Unfortunately, you aren’t the one-and-only! Even if you are married to the recipient of your email I promise you the love of your life gets emails from other people. Shocking, I know. Since this is the case be considerate of other people’s in-box.
If my memory serves me correctly there were WAAAAY more than 7 rules to letter writting when I was in high school. What would you like to add to my list of ideas?
Nibbling away -
Sundi
[...] 7 ideas to improve email communications [...]
Pretty good list. Definitely agree with what you have.
We are a training company specializing in virtual communications. We tell everyone they should have a communication plan that includes things like you have here.
What the team comes up with is their own business, but we do offer them a sample of communication norms for email.
Here’s what we include in that sample that you don’t have here.
1. Create a responsiveness norm for the team. We suggest one day unless the document asks for a later date. If you don’t have this it is really easy to break trust.
2. If action is requested or required, list the individual under “to.” If no action is required, that individual should be listed on “cc.”
3. Action requests should come in the first paragraph (a lot of people read only this far and miss that you need them to do something).
4. We agree with you on your first point about space. The way we say it is, “Emails will be no longer than one page. If you can’t say what you need to say in that space, you haven’t thought about it enough.”
5. Cover only one topic per email.
6. Provide easy follow up information.
Jim Kutsko
Bridge the Distance
Hi Jim! My favorite from your list is the responsiveness norm. It does drive me crazy to not hear back within at least 72 hours from most emails I send – I really love 24 though! Thanks for your input.