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January 22, 2007
Email Etiquette Tips
I was presenting a seminar today in Missoula, Montana and we were talking about email etiquette as it relates to productivity. Here are some of the highlights that I've personally gotten value from over the years:
*Reserve the To: field for who has the action, everyone else goes in CC: (if you've ever received an email with 14 of you in the To: field and you could all take action so NO ONE takes action you'll get value from this one.)
*Use a code such as "NNB" in the subject line for quick messages back and forth to tell someone there's "Nothing New Below" in the message body. This makes processing email based on subject lines alone a snap.
*If the subject line changes, change the subject line. The overly-used "Checking In" might have been a great subject line 8 emails ago, but it might not have anything to do with the current thread.
*Don't cc: God and the world. I find that people tend to be overly generous in sharing information on email. Consider that every email that someone gets take 30 seconds to process on average. Is this worth their time? If you're not sure, ask them if they want to be cc:d on that kind of stuff.
*If you're getting emails that don't relate to your current areas of focus, interests etc. let the person know. They may not realize you don't need/want to get cc:d on that.
One of the most comprehensive lists of email etiquette that I've seen lately was put out by ITSecurity.com. They've also got some great tips for eliminating spam. Both worth a read, in my opinion.
Posted by Kelly at January 22, 2007 08:34 PM
Comments
Never heard of "NNB" - the standard equivalent of this "EOM" which means End of Message.
different strokes
Posted by: andee at January 24, 2007 05:47 PM
Hi Andee,
You're right, EOM is a more commonly known one. Although, I've been told that people in accounting/finance won't be as happy about using that one since it means End of Month in that world.
A funny story I heard about coding subject lines was a guy who got a reply back from his boss with the code "TMI" (too much information) in the subject line. Apparently the employee had sent a long email to the boss's BlackBerry. Not happy with having to read a long email like that, the boss simply sent it back with TMI.
Thanks for posting.
Kelly
Posted by: Kelly Forrister at January 25, 2007 07:46 AM
I think that the tip about changing the subject line would be very helpful and should be done more often. The tip about "letting someone know if you don't want to receive their cc:d emails" would be a difficult thing to do. I think those emails are annoying but it would be hard to tell someone to stop sending them.
Posted by: Bri at March 6, 2007 10:02 PM
I use the rules feature in Microsoft Outlook to send all the emails on which I'm cc'd to a separate folder. If your rule of 'Reserve the To: field for who has the action' is followed, then my inbox should only be filled with actionable items. Also, I ask people to send 'just in time' email to my work address, Just in case... stuff to my gmail account and I try not to read gmail during business hours. Using Google reader for news collection takes the strain off my inbox as well...
Posted by: Todd at March 7, 2007 04:33 AM
can a boss make you copy him on repsonses if he was not on the to: list to begin with?
Posted by: jeff at May 24, 2007 05:56 PM
