E-mail Etiquette for Businesses

Video Transcript

"The volume of e-mail we get today can be overwhelming, and it's important that you put some kind of...not control, but some kind of business etiquette to e-mail. My name is Kathy Pabst Robshaw, Total Telephone Effectiveness. First thing I would beg you to do is, in your subject line, make it easy to identify what it relates to. It helps you know whether it needs urgent attention or not, as well as that little exclamation mark that you do get. It also helps you file it and find it when you file it. And another tip might well be to put on there 'reply needed' or 'no reply needed' -- that way, you know if you have to deal with it straight away -- in the subject line. It's pretty important and pretty strong to use that effectively. If you CC someone in an email -- I don't know if you're aware of this or not -- that's for information only. That person is not meant to reply. I'm on a committee, and the CC goes to certain people and they're not meant to reply. When they do, it totally messes up the communication and opens up all kinds of issues. So CC means information only. Please be grammatically correct. It's just like a letter. It should have good grammar in it. No text abbreviations like the letter U instead of Y-O-U. No paragraphs -- bullets are good, short, sharp sentences are good. E-mails are pretty much scan. They're not read verbatim, as a letter would be. Please put in a call to action as well. So keep it short, keep it strong, keep it brief. Kathy Pabst Robshaw, Total Telephone Effectiveness."