Email Etiquette

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Email Etiquette - By: Mail Radar, Posted on: 2008-05-30

Email is one of today’s most widely employed means of communication. Whether for personal or business purposes, email is extensively used throughout every day activities, its speed and reliability making it the communication channel of choice for millions of people worldwide. Figures on email usage are impressive, and growing, as reported by major technology research companies.
According to Email Marketing Reports, The Radicati Group estimates 1.2 billion email users worldwide in 2007. Figures are expected to reach up to 1.6 billion by 2011, as stated in a report issued by the company in October, 2007. In a previous study, dated October 2006, Radicati also estimated that approximately 183 billion emails were sent each day in 2006 and that wireless email users would grow "from 14 million in 2006 up to 228 million in 2010". For the business environment, Ferris Research3 estimated the number of business email users at around 780 million in 2007.
22 Rules for Smart Email Writing
The extensive usage of email has also shaped the basic rules for an effective email communication, also called as the "email etiquette”. These are the rules helping you express your ideas better and faster in an email, enabling you at the same time to deliver a clear and simple, easy to understand message:

Keep it short and simple- use brief and clear sentences to make your point. You do not want the person receiving your email to get lost in a bunch of stories, or stuck in that half page phrase that you started your email with. A clear and short email will also result in a short and clear reply.

Stick to one topic, if possible - approaching one subject per email would be ideal, but if several issues need to be discussed, then break your text into paragraphs to differentiate them.
Remember that long email you received in the last minute at work? With countless replies and forwards, going back and forth from your manager to several colleagues and departments, and then back to you? How long did it take you to read all the stories in the email and digg in after some reply you may have missed? And some piece of information that would have helped you put all the things together so much faster?

A relevant subject line - the subject of your email message will help your addressee to faster identify your email message and assert its importance, thus giving it the proper priority. Do not mislead the receiver of your email. Write now “Urgent, expecting your reply” for an internal survey regarding the lunch at the company’s cafeteria, and you may be waiting for long next time you actually need to communicate something fast. Like in the story with the boy who cried wolf.

To avoid sending the email by accident – fill in the "To" field only after having made a thorough check of your email text. Some email servers, such as the AXIGEN Mail Server, can help you out by providing a message delay delivery feature, very helpful in preventing the accidental sending of email messages (especially important for business-critical departments within an enterprise).

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