Using Email Effectively | How-to Guides for running your business from Business.com

To many colleagues and small businesses, email has become a burden to our productivity and work-life balance. This guide highlights some of the pitfalls and steps to take to reduce the amount of email you send and receive, but make it more efficient and to the point.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Spend Less Time on Email

The first tip is don't have your email software open at all times. Otherwise everytime an email appears you are going to be tempted to open it up. Instead, just assign a timeslot every day when you will tackle emails. This will make you more efficient to be doing all your email communication in one go.

I recommend: Manage your time more effectively by using specific time slots to tackle emails.

The reply-to-all message

Don't click reply to all if you don't need to. And in the same vain, only send emails to people who are interested. Don't blanket email the whole company!

I recommend: This blog about the dreaded reply all!

The evolving agenda message

If you're on a project team, you may get an agenda that changes four or five times before the meeting takes place. Not only does that create a lot of extra e-mail, but if you haven't kept up with your inbox, you'll go to the meeting with an outdated agenda. Team leads should send out an initial draft agenda, get feedback, and then wait to send out a final version until right before the meeting.

I recommend: Use email efficiently

Create Effective Subject Lines

Try to make your subject titles relevant to the email, include keywords such as ACTION REQUIRED, or if it is a short email then just put the body of the email in the title, such as THANKS - ALL COMPLETE. This draws the reader to any urgent actions, but also helps them to avoid reading things that are unrelevant.

I recommend: Use effective email subjects

Useless Types of Email

The cover-your-assets message – "It's unnecessary to send out a message with the sole purpose of letting people know you're doing your job or someone else isn't." The ball-is-in-your-court message – "With this email you delay action by sending a message to someone else knowing that you don't need to respond to it until they respond back to you. It's very inefficient." The ever-so-polite-thank-you message – "We all want to be polite," says Chris. "If you feel compelled to thank someone, put your thank you in a subject line so people do not have to open another message." The let-me-know-when-this-has been read message – "There are times when you legitimately need to know that someone has read your message; however, we are just using it too much and it is clogging up the systems." The never-ending message stream – "These messages force you to read down about 20 emails to figure out what the original intent was.

I recommend: Don't send useless emails!

Think about what you write

It may sound simple, but make sure your writing is legible, without spelling mistakes, or mis-typed or missing words. IT only takes a few moments to check over emails and this can save misunderstandings, miscommunication, and people having to come back and ask you what you meant!

I recommend: Try using a spellchecker, and read over your email.

The official source of Using Email Effectively is the Email Solutions page at Business.com

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