Once used pretty infrequently, e-mail now dominates communication among friends, family, and at the workplace. In an increasingly fast-paced world we often find ourselves multitasking several things at once, making the ability to receive a message and come back to it later a crucial tool in business operations.
Some time ago I interviewed for an editor position at a local university. One hour prior to the interview my car broke down, and I had to take a cab for a 30-minute ride into the suburbs. Obviously flustered, the interview went poorly, but I thought I could salvage it with a good follow-up letter in an e-mail. After hitting the “send” button I was horrified to see that I had included a typo in my message. This is bad practice in general, but for an editor it’s unforgivable.
Needless to say, I never got a call back.
The repercussions of sending a bad e-mail extends further than the follow-up letter for an interview. The inability to write effective e-mail may damage business relationships, misrepresent your message, and could get you in trouble at the workplace. Don’t repeat my mistake. Here are 5 signs that your e-mail is ready to be sent.
- You are not emotional or angry.
Confronting conflict through the text of an e-mail is easier than doing it in person. The immunity you have to any immediate response or lash-back makes solving conflict through e-mail a fairly passive aggressive way to handle a problem. Though the desire may exist, don’t fall victim to sending an e-mail while you are emotional. You might say things you don’t mean, and damage business and coworker relationships forever.
If you feel compelled to get something off your chest, write the angry e-mail and save it in draft form. Once you calm down, you can come back to the message and evaluate it in an objective way. If you still feel like your complaints are well founded, you can at least alter the message to not sound confrontational, or better yet, go to the person and talk to them directly.
- You’ve checked it for typos and read it out loud.
Internal communications might be more lenient than when working with a potential client, but it’s beneficial to have good grammar, spelling, and punctuation across the board when writing e-mail. If you work in a professional, literary, or academic environment, it’s important to show that you are taking your time when you are working, even with smaller tasks like e-mail. Typos and spelling errors when communicating with a client has a negative effect on any impression about your professionalism.
The best method of checking your correspondence is by reading it out loud, word by word. If something doesn’t make sense, you obviously made a typo. This level of diligence will ensure you won’t make any typos or come off as unprofessional.
- E-mail is the best communication method in this case.
Nothing is more annoying than having to wait an extended period of time for a three-second response. While e-mail is dynamic and gives you more utility than traditional communication, sometimes a phone call still works best. If you are on a tight deadline, or there is something delaying the project that could be resolved with simple verbal approval, don’t waste your time drafting an e-mail.
E-mail is so easy to use, but shouldn’t be the sole means of communication, especially in business relationships.
- You’ve checked that it’s going to the “right people.”
Few things are worse than sending an e-mail to the wrong person and causing office drama. Often times when people are cc’d on an e-mail, the “reply all” function is really overused. Make sure that you are sending the reply to the applicable people – or the people who need the response. CCing everyone on the e-mail is a waste of their time, and could also create unforeseen conflict.
Additionally, because of the “auto-fill” function on most modern e-mail platforms, you’ll want to make sure that it is going to the right person. :You don’t want to send confidential internal communications to an outside source, nor do you want to send personal e-mails to the wrong person at your company.
- It’s on target and concise.
E-mail is great because it’s a quick way to relay information to someone else when it doesn’t require a phone call or an in-person meeting. As mentioned before, it is not a good means of communication for everything. If you are developing complex plans to launch a product or service for instance, this requires meetings, verbal communication, and dialogue.
When writing external communication, a wall of text is usually not effective. If you find your e-mail running very long, it’s probably a good indication that this person needs to be contacted for some kind of dialogue, or that you aren’t on point. Avoid extraneous narrative, as it only goes to waste people’s times for a communication device whose sole purpose is to be quick.
The importance of sending quality e-mail is often overlooked, however it shouldn’t be. Just like you wouldn’t underestimate calling your boss, you shouldn’t overlook writing an e-mail to them. Having bad etiquette or constant errors online can lead to a deteriorated relationship, and at very worse, the loss of your job.
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