Electronic Mail Is Still Useful

In an article I read the other day, the author quotes the CEO of a newsletter company (which some might call a spammer) saying:

“Email is a 40-year-old technology that is not going away for very good reasons — it’s the cockroach of the Internet.”

This got me thinking about how people use email and why some people are not effective at using email.

I’ve been using email on the “Internet” for almost 25 years, have written 2 email clients ([Eudora](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client) for Newton and Mark/Space Mail), and have worked on a third ([Eudora](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client) for Mac), so I think I have a little experience using email. With all the new fangled communications means such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instant Messaging, some would say that email is dead. I’d argue that email is more useful than ever and that people need to be trained (or re-trained) on how to communicate. The ease of some other mechanisms has made people lazy. I’ll just go ahead and list some of my ideas that I believe helps in business communication; personal communication is different, but some of these ideas can apply there as well. Most of my items apply to composing messages, but I also threw in an item about receiving email.

• Email should be treated like any formal communication. If you want a good response, in particular for business purposes, write your email like it is a term paper that you’ll receive a grade.

• Don’t use abbreviations like LOL, OMG, etc. They make you look dumb when communicating with customers, co-workers, business partners.

• Proofread your email. Check your spelling and punctuation. You never know who will read your message or how they will judge you. Remember that a lot of business email is forwarded; more than just the recipient may see it.

• Slow down and take your time to compose your message. For some messages, I’ve spent hours composing the message and then have someone else review it before sending. You can’t unsend a message, so if you write it quickly, it may come across in the wrong way.

• Don’t write or respond to email when you’re angry; you may regret it later. Your tone can come across in the message.

• If you want an answer from someone, make your case, then clearly list your question or questions(s) on separate lines. I like to make my questions into a list so that someone that responds can respond inline with answers. No matter how much you think your ideas are great, if you don’t get to the point, you’re not going to receive a meaningful answer. A former boss told me to ask questions like I was talking to a 3 year old (my son was that old at the time). While I don’t completely agree with it, I think that simplifying questions in certain cases will make it easier to get an answer.

• Don’t assume that your audience has the same context you have. In many cases, the people you are sending email to may only know a little bit about your problem and don’t know all the other working parts. So, make it easy for you to get a response by narrowing down your email to question(s) that the audience can answer.

• Don’t address your email to a mailing list if you want a response. Address your message to one or more individuals that can give you an answer; copy appropriate mailing lists. Using the shotgun approach to email may make you look and feel good, but is not very effective.

• Learn to use Bcc. You look like an idiot sending email to 50 people when a reply isn’t relevant to all 50 people.

• Trim down the cc and to lists on replies removing people that aren’t relevant.

• Know your audience. Sending email to some email list at a company is usually a bad idea. The list could have 2500 people on it who have no idea what your email has to do with them. You may think it is relevant, but others may not care. For instance, if you’re changing the schema on a database, sending it to thousands of people, many of whom don’t use the database, is going to annoy people.

• Get to the point. Long email messages are either skimmed with the reader not getting the whole point of it or are skipped. The reader’s time is precious; treat it as such.

• When you receive email, remember the delete key. Check the subject and maybe the first paragraph and delete email that isn’t relevant to you; you’ll be able to get through your pile of email quickly. You don’t have to reply to every message.

I believe that there is no other electronic communication means as effective as email; however, people have gotten lazy and made it less useful. A work day doesn’t go by that I don’t have to write email; if my email isn’t effective, I can’t do my job.

I’m sure people won’t agree with everything I’ve said, but some of these tips help me every day. Any comments?