{"id":5038,"date":"2013-09-17T13:22:27","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T18:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/?p=5038"},"modified":"2022-08-03T13:27:30","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T18:27:30","slug":"email-best-practices-top-3-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/email-best-practices-top-3-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Email Best Practices – Top 3 (Back by Popular Demand)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Woman<\/a>Oh the joys of a vacation\u2026and the agony of going back to work.<\/p>\n

For many, it\u2019s the email in-box that we dread returning to most. After a week of vacation, how many unread emails do you expect in your in-box?  100?  500?  1000?<\/p>\n

I believe that somewhere in the not-too-distant future is a world free of email, but in the meantime, I am completely befuddled as to how little time is invested in training of email best practices.<\/p>\n

Obviously, this is a topic about which many books have been written, but below are three of my favorite standard email best practices that are all too infrequently practiced:<\/p>\n

1.         Make the subject line count. <\/strong>Mark Twain is credited with the observation that, \u201cI would have sent you a shorter letter but I didn\u2019t have time.\u201d It\u2019s hard to condense what you need to say in as few words as possible. And it can be really hard to get the message across in the space of a subject line. But it\u2019s NOT ABOUT YOU. Help the receiver of your email know exactly what the content is about and what\u2019s required of you. A decision? An opinion? Is it just an FYI? Make use of the subject line space as much as possible so the recipient doesn\u2019t have to read 750 words of content to get the gist of your message and what it requires of them.<\/p>\n

2.         Remember what cc: stands for \u2013 Courtesy Copy. <\/strong>When you construct an email, anyone whose name is in the cc: field should not have to respond. The meaning of cc: is \u201cI\u2019m just copying you on this FYI.\u201d This is significant for people who make use of rules in Outlook to manage their email. Theoretically, I should be able to defer emails in which I am simply cc\u2019d and deal with them at my convenience \u2014 after I deal with those directly addressed to me.<\/p>\n

3.         If you must send a content-heavy email, make it digestible<\/strong>. In general, I take a less is more <\/em>stand on most things, but sometimes a content-heavy email is necessary.  However, if you do have a lot to say in an email, help the reader with thoughtful use of bullet points, bold <\/strong>or italicized  <\/em>key words,<\/em> or numbered items. I remember a colleague who would always distinguish questions or anything that required a response from the rest of the text by underlining it<\/span>. I currently work with someone who routinely sends content-heavy emails that are entirely readable because they are well-organized. It is evident that she has put considerable time into constructing them. However, that time is saved many times over because those of us receiving them have very few, if any, questions!<\/p>\n

Email is going to be with us for awhile. So until we achieve that paradigmatic shift that liberates us all from the burden of \u201dmanaging\u201d an inbox with 100s or 1000s of messages, let\u2019s take some time to learn how to make better use of what we\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh the joys of a vacation\u2026and the agony of going back to work. For many, it\u2019s the email in-box that we dread returning to most. After a week of vacation, how many unread emails do you expect in your in-box?  100?  500?  1000? I believe that somewhere in the not-too-distant future is a world free of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":10615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[140],"class_list":["post-5038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-watermark-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5038"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10628,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5038\/revisions\/10628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5038"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}