I’m often told by others that they love my emails. I’m sometimes told that they are cute. And my personal favorite is when I’m told that it brightens someone’s day. I live for those remarks! I email a lot! I have a personal email account, my school email account, my work email account, my other work email account , my blog email, my gmail, and like 3 or 4 other email accounts that I manage. On average I send about 100 emails a day and receive about 200 a day, not including spam emails. I know it sounds like a lot but it really isn’t. I know people who receive about 300 a day and probably respond to a ton of them too!
Emailing is a big part of how we communicate, especially in the professional world. A lot of people don’t have time to stay on the phone and gab; they have a quick question and need a quick response.
Which brings me to my point; some people have really bad email netiquette. Seriously. I mean atrocious netiquette. For that reason I wanted to enlighten people with my very own email netiquette rules. (I’m a girly girl, so my rules may be a little shiny, but remove the glitter and sequins and it can apply to everyone).
THE TOP FIVE RULES OF SENDING GREAT EMAILS:
Rule #1: Start your email off with a greeting.
So many times I’ve gotten an email and people just start talking. Uh…Rude! Can I get a hello? A good morning? What’s up? (In personal emails only) Can I get something, before you start asking me for a favor? It is quite simple to add Hello! Good Morning! Good Afternoon! Something that lets the individual know that you somewhat care about how they are doing. In the email below you can see how I started the email off with a greeting. Carrie is always super busy, so she doesn’t have time to read long emails. So I started off wishing Carrie a great day BEFORE I start asking for favors.
Rule #2: Use complete and grammatically correct sentences. I’ve received emails from people, professionals and students with just one word. OK. YEAH. SURE. This is not text messaging! Can a sister get a complete thought? Please? Also, if you send me an email that doesn’t make any kind of sense, I’m likely not to respond. Or I will respond with an email full of question marks. I’ll be sure to start off with a greeting though!
I’ll be sure to start off with a greeting though!
Rule #3: SPELL CHECK YOUR EMAILS! This is the most important rule of all. Its okay to not have a greeting and you can get away with a one word email response, but if you continuously send out emails with misspellings, people are going to question your intelligence, and they WILL think you are stupid. This is especially important in the professional workplace, but not even my mommy wants to receive an email with misspelled words.
Rule #4: Be nice in your emails! Sometimes we have to email people who have made mistakes or provided us wrong information. And sometimes we have to be the ones to correct someone else’s error. No matter what I always keep a positive tone in my emails. Below is how I responded to an individual whose membership information was lost by our staff. It was our fault and this individual was already upset. I wanted to make sure that I left him with a positive image of our organization.
Rule #5: Add some personality! This is my favorite rule of all. Sometimes especially at work, we forget that we are people. We try so hard to follow the rules and do our jobs that we forget to be ourselves. I love getting emails from people who have personalized their emails, because it just shows that that person is an individual. You can add personality to your email through the use of color, adding quotes, and through your verbiage. The signature line is a great place to do that! Takea look at my signature.
Another thing to note when emailing is timeliness. It is important to respond to emails as soon as you can. It doesn’t take but a few seconds to type a response. No one should be waiting for more than 24 hours for a response from you. Emailing is a great way to communicate and it is important to be effective communicators!
Have a super day!
2 thoughts on “Email Netiquette”
Greetings. I love your blog, BAPs, or should I write Barbie. Starting an email off with a greeting is good netiquette. Thank you for sharing such great rules. I am impressed with your mind and how intelligently you express yourself. I am not sure Barbie is the right handle for you.
Thanks for reading! I took a look at your blog as well! Be sure to come back!
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