Email Etiquette
Back to the main newsletter page.Mod Dog's Internet Newsletter - 02/02/01
This newsletter contains news, trends and useful advice to help businesses develop a more successful Web site and Internet strategy. Subscribe and unsubscribe instructions are at the bottom of the newsletter.
In this issue:
EMAIL ETIQUETTE
TREND - PAYING FOR SEARCH ENGINE REGISTRATION AND PLACEMENT
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1. EMAIL ETIQUETTE
Proper email etiquette is often one of the most overlooked aspects of an effective Internet strategy, but ignoring it could be costing your business thousands of dollars in lost sales and a substantial amount of goodwill.
No matter your own personal opinion on this issue, the simple fact is that many people (your customers, potential customers, vendors, partners, etc...) DO form an opinion of you and your company based upon how well or how poorly you communicate with them, and email plays a big part in that.
If you regularly and intentionally ignore the basic rules of grammar, punctuation and email etiquette, you allow people to form an opinion of you and your business that you would otherwise do all you could to prevent.
What are some of those rules?
(My standard disclaimer of "only scratching the surface" certainly applies here, as well as the point that what follows is intended for business related email, not personal email to family and friends.)
In considering the following rules of email etiquette, always operate from these assumptions:
- that instead of sending an email, the person is standing right in front of you, or you are writing an "official" business letter intended to be read by a company's CEO, and this communication can be overheard and/or read by others.
- that you want this person to spend money on your company's products or services and to speak well of you to others.
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1. Always
use proper punctuation and grammar. If your email program has a built
in spell checker, use it.
2. If you are replying to an email, quote only the appropriate part of the message that you are replying to. If you don't know how to use your email program to "quote" a reply and edit it, read the program's help manual or ask a friend to help you.
3. Keep your messages short and to the point. (Ok, so maybe this one is extra difficult for some people :-) )
4. Capitalization should only be used for emphasis. Capitalizing all words is the equivalent of shouting.
5. If you are replying to or writing an email about a potentially sensitive subject, don't hit the "send" button until you've walked away from the computer and thought about it for at least a few hours. An email is often a very poor translator of "what you really meant" and you don't have the benefit of using your tone of voice or inflection as if you were speaking directly to the person.
6. ALWAYS reply to email (especially business related) within 24 hours (unless of course there is a true emergency preventing this). Even a reply of "I'll get back to you on this tomorrow...", is much better than not replying at all. Not replying to an email in which a specific question is asked or in which an issue obviously needs addressed is the equivalent of standing directly in front of that person and ignoring them when they speak to you. If someone did that to you, would you want to do business with them?
7. Always use a proper and accurate subject title. Don't type a subject of "hello" and then proceed to ask about three separate, important issues. Conversely, if you are replying to an email but changing the original subject matter, reflect that change in your subject title.
8. Always remember that email may not be or remain private (just ask Bill Gates!), nor can you ever be 100% sure that it arrived to the person you sent it to (or at least on time). If you are sending something that is truly vital to your business, a phone call or snail mail letter may be better. If you do send an email of a vital nature, follow it up with a phone call to make sure the intended recipient received it.
9. Don't send HTML formatted email unless you know what you are doing and your intended recipients requested to receive email from you in that way.
10. Always sign your email, preferable with a standard signature file. Signature files should not be longer than 5-6 lines at most.
11. Are you SURE you want to forward that dirty joke or political comment your brother-in-law sent you to the new business contact you just made?
12. Understand the proper and effective use of the "cc" and "bcc" fields.
13. 99% of "virus warning" type emails are hoaxes, unless they come directly from your virus software company. Simply delete them. Similarly, don't forward to your business contacts the emails that ask you to "forward this immediately to 10 people on your email list so this child can live!".
14. Finally, and most importantly, never send SPAM!
If you would like to learn more about this subject, there are many resources available on the Internet, including entire books on the subject of effective email use for business. Simply go to your favorite search engine or directory and search for "email etiquette" or "proper use of email".
What do you think? Is following these rules and suggestions really worth it? Do you have your own particular pet peeves for email? Let me know your opinion, whether you agree with these suggestions or not.
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TREND - PAYING FOR SEARCH ENGINE REGISTRATION AND PLACEMENT
The next issue of the newsletter will cover this in more depth, but if part of your marketing plan includes getting traffic from search engines, it's important to know about recent changes in how some of the major search engines operate and what some of the new effective techniques are, as well as some limitations you may encounter.
Basically, it comes down to, like so many other things in business, having to spend money to make money. Both Yahoo and LookSmart (the owner of the database that many other major search engines use to generate their results) are now "pay to get registered" for business Web sites. It's also important to understand that paying Yahoo or LookSmart only gets your site "reviewed", and does NOT guarantee placement, much less a high position.
Another trend is the "pay for placement" model as best exemplified by GoTo.com. Because this is one of the Web's most heavily trafficked search engine, it's important to understand how this model works and how you can use it or others like it to drive targeted traffic to your Web site.
The next newsletter will focus on the search engine issue, so if you have any questions or comments for me, please get them to me right away.
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That's it for this issue of Mod Dog's Internet Newsletter. I hope you enjoyed the information you discovered and learned a few things too. I encourage and welcome any questions or comments you may have regarding anything related to Web site development or Internet strategy.
In response to a lot of requests, I have decided to offer a one hour, telephone only, consulting service. Please visit my consulting services page for more information.
Best regards,
Brian White
Mod Dog Internet Services, Inc.
Web Site Design \ Web Site Hosting \ E-Commerce Services
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