8 E-mail mistakes that make you look bad. By Kim Komando
The E-mail you save can be held against you. By Kim Komando
Bosses: 10 tips for better e-mails By Monte Enbysk
by Kim Komando for Microsoft.com
I get an awful lot of e-mail. Sometimes, people are looking for help with their computers. Some of it is fan mail.
Other folks are mad about something I said or wrote. Add to this the barrage of press releases and an occasional blast from the past when a former classmate or ex-boss drops me a note.
After facing this tidal wave of electronic words for several years, as well as owning my own business, I've developed some strong opinions about e-mail and correspondents.
Here are eight easily avoidable mistakes you should know about to keep your image and inbox in tip-top shape.
1. Failing to follow e-mail etiquette. I believe in the old adage, "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." There's no point in belaboring the etiquette issue. We all know we should be polite. But here are a few points to consider:
Don't
write when you're angry. Wait 24 hours. Calm down. Be reasonable. Have someone
else edit your e-mail.
Don't use sarcasm. You may think you're clever, but the recipient will be put
off.
DON'T USE ALL UPPERCASE! That's the e-mail equivalent of yelling. Your
recipient won't be appreciative. Go easy on the exclamation marks, too. Overuse
dulls their effectiveness.
Use clear subject lines. That will help people decide whether to read the
e-mail now or later. We're all busy. Your correspondent will appreciate your
thoughtfulness.
Keep it short. If your e-mail is more than two paragraphs, maybe you should
use the telephone.
Change the subject line if you change the topic of a thread.
Unless the recipient has previously agreed, don't forward poems, jokes, virus
warnings and other things. You're just wasting valuable time and bandwidth.
2. Thinking you are anonymous.
If you are sending nasty missives, you might think no one will be able to figure
out that the e-mail came from you. After all, you set up a phony Web address.
Think again. E-mail contains invisible information about the sender.
That information is in the header. All major e-mail programs can display header information. Here's how:
In
Microsoft Outlook, double click the e-mail. Then click View > Options.
In Microsoft Outlook Express, click the e-mail. Then click File > Properties
and select the Details tab.
In Eudora, double click the message. Then click the Blah Blah button.
In Netscape, click the message to open it. Then click View > Message Source to
display the header.
The sender's revealing information is in the sections that begin with "Received:." There may be several of these, depending on the number of computers the e-mail traversed. The originating computer is in the bottom "Received:."
That
section will have an Internet Protocol (IP) number, such as 124.213.45.11. It
can be traced on a number of Web sites. I use InterNIC (www.internic.net).
The number is probably assigned to the sender's Internet service provider,
rather than the sender. But the ISP will be able to identify the sender using
that number. Remember the header if you're tempted to send an anonymous e-mail.
You may be less anonymous than you think.
3. Sending e-mail to the wrong
person. Today's e-mail programs want to make it easy to send
e-mail. This means that when you start typing the address of a recipient to whom
you have previously sent mail, the "To:" field may already be populated. Be
careful. Always double-check the recipient is the intended one.
In addition, if you're writing something ugly about Joe Smith, you'll have Joe's name on your mind. Don't send it to him. I once knew an intern at a newspaper who did just that. He didn't like his supervisor and said so in graphic terms in an e-mail. Then he accidentally sent the e-mail to his supervisor. (The intern kept his position, but the atmosphere was cold, to say the least. And there was no job offer at summer's end.)
4. Using
one e-mail address for everything.
I have four different e-mail addresses: private, public, one I use for online
mailing lists, and another for when I go shopping online. These addresses
attract mail for those specific areas.
I can have as many as I want, because I host my own e-mail server. But if you
are using an Internet service provider, you still can do this. Most providers
will give you a half-dozen e-mail accounts. You can also use addresses on the
Web for personal accounts. Both Hotmail and Yahoo! are good. You can reach those
accounts from anywhere, assuming you have Web
5.
Forgetting to check all of your e-mail accounts.
Checking all these accounts can be a chore, especially from home. So I use
ePrompter (www.eprompter.com),
which can check 16 different password- protected accounts. Best of all,
ePrompter is free. There are other programs that will do this for a fee,
including Active Email Monitor (www.emailmon.com).
6. Clicking "Send" too fast.
Reread every e-mail before you send it! I actually get e-mails from job
applicants with misspellings and missing words. They all go to the same place:
the garbage. This is a pet peeve. I'm not going to hire someone who is careless.
Even if you're not looking for a job, you want to be careful. People will judge you subconsciously on mistakes. None of us is perfect. But you can catch 99% of these problems by rereading the text.
And don't
depend on the spell-checker. It will catch misspellings. But if you use "four"
instead of "for," or "your" for "you're," it won't tell you. It also is not
likely to catch any missing words in a sentence that you inadvertently failed to
include. So take a minute and reread your text. Don't look like an ignoramus.
7. Forgetting the attachment.
This seems obvious, but I can't tell you how many times I've received
an e-mail with a missing attachment. Since we all do it occasionally, it
shouldn't be a huge deal.
However, if
you consistently make this mistake, people (perhaps important people) may think
you're losing your marbles. They might even hesitate to do business with you in
the future. When you get ready to send your e-mail, think: "What am I
forgetting?"
8. Using your ISP's domain and not
your own. Make your company look big. If you use a Web account
or an ISP's name for your business, you're not going to look professional. You
can buy a domain name separately for $20-$30 per year from a company such as
VeriSign (www.netsol.com),
or as part of a package from a Web hosting and e-mail service such as that
offered by Microsoft Small Business. Assuming someone else hasn't already
grabbed it, you can have your company in the domain name.
Let's say you run The BoolaBoola Co. If you use an ISP's address, you would have something like JoeBoolaBoola@SomeISP.com. But if you buy your own domain name, it could be Joe@TheBoolaBoolaCo.com. That's much more likely to impress your customers.
E-mail is almost like talking. We use it so much that we don't really think about it. But there are rules and courtesies, just as there are with talking. And there are other considerations involved in communicating by written word only.
Giving them some additional thought could make your e-mail experience more satisfying and your recipients much happier.
by Kim Komando for Microsoft.com
When it comes to e-mail, I'm a packrat. No, it is not true that I still have the first e-mail I ever received. But I probably have my first e-mail from the year 2000.
In fact, I probably have all my e-mails from the year 2000. So of course, I have everything since then, too.Why do I have all this stuff? I'm not sure, frankly. Maybe I was concerned that I would be sued over some imaginary transgression and would need an e-trail to prove my innocence. Or maybe I was vaguely concerned about some legal requirement to save this stuff.
I'm not the only one doing this. Some of you have thousands of e-mails, too. And you probably don't know why you're saving them, either. Maybe you're worried about going to jail over some stupid e-mail you can't find.
I'm hardly an expert in what e-mail documents and records to save. So I talked to Donald Skupsky, the president of Information Requirements Clearinghouse. He modestly describes himself as the world's leading expert in this area. I also talked with Charles Fine, a Phoenix attorney.
Here are some things to consider when you wonder whether or not to save e-mail, particularly in light of the federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which imposes more requirements on mostly public companies to preserve records. Obviously, if you still have questions, talk to a lawyer. Save important records. But e-mail is not always considered a record. Companies should save records of business transactions. If you sign a contract, save that contract. If you receive the contract as an attachment to an e-mail, and the other party says in the e-mail, "We accept the contract," save the e-mail too. That constitutes a record.
So if you would keep it as a paper document, keep the e-mail. Otherwise, pitch it. That includes e-mails generated during the contract process. This is work-in-progress material, and does not reflect the thinking of an organization. Rather, they are the thoughts of individuals.
When you do keep something, store it formally. Don't leave it in your e-mail program where no one can find it. You might be best off to print it and put it in a folder. Sometimes, keep more. There are certain times in which you cannot discard things. For instance, if you are part of a legal process, you can't delete anything that is relevant. I'd err on the side of caution. Better yet, follow your lawyer's advice.
Even if you are not currently in a legal process, there are two other important words: imminent and foreseeable. If you're on notice that you'll be indicted, things are imminent. Now is not a good time to clean out your e-mails. If you make a big boo-boo and somebody gets hurt, a lawsuit is foreseeable. Again, be careful. Talk to your lawyer.
According to Skupsky, only the securities industry is required to keep all of its e-mails. But the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has added considerably to the record-keeping burden of some companies mostly public companies or companies who do business with public companies. (For more on Sarbanes-Oxley's effect on private companies, see this article.)
Again, if you think you may be affected by Sarbanes-Oxley, see your lawyer. But don't keep everything. Most likely, those e-mails piling up probably won't hurt anything (except your server space). Most of us get into business because we see an unanswered need. We want to help our customers. We've never been sued, and never expect to be.
However, it could very well happen. Let's say that, after exercising superhuman patience, you fire Joe Screwup. You could not have treated Screwup better, but, of course, he doesn't see it that way. So Screwup sues.
You're not worried. But then you get a subpoena, ordering you to submit any e-mail from the past three years that bears on the case. There's nothing in the e-mail that would affect the case, and Screwup knows it. But you'll have to dig up everything you have, and your lawyer will go through it, looking for relevant material. How many hours, at $200 per hour, will it take her to do that? So you swallow hard and give Screwup $15,000 to go away. You may never have thought about this, but you can bet that the plaintiffs' bar has.
Worse, maybe they find an e-mail in which you express intemperate remarks. The e-mail was probably meaningless, but Screwup's attorney will make you look like Adolf Hitler.
Given the potential problems, why save e-mail? Sure, this scenario is pretty unlikely. But 99.9% of your old e-mail is junk, anyway. Why take the risk? Develop a policy on e-mail retention. Skupsky recommends a personal 30-day deadline for taking action. After 30 days, your employees (and you) have to decide if an e-mail is a record. If not, it goes. This has the salutary effect of forcing your employees to think about what a record is, and is not. Attorney Chuck Fine thinks that's a good idea. But he goes further, and chucks (no pun intended) his e-mail immediately.
Don't back up your e-mail. This is no different than keeping it on your computer. If you're subpoenaed, you and your lawyer will have to go through it, whether it's on the computer or on tape. Delete the old stuff.
According to Skupsky, old e-mail is rarely useful to the other side. But if it costs $50,000 to go through it, the plaintiff doesn't care. Neither does his lawyer. They have nothing to lose. Discovery is a wonderful weapon to force a settlement.
So I'm cleaning out my old e-mails. No, really! It's difficult, though. I've had them so long, they're like old pals. You should clean out yours, too. We have to be strong about this.
by Monte Enbysk
What does your e-mail say about you as a manager? A lot, says David A. Owens, clinical professor of management at Vanderbilt University's Owen School of Management. It provides a window into your workplace status, work habits, stress levels, even your personality, he says.
Owens is an organizational behavior guru who can analyze an anonymous piece of e-mail and tell you the sender's likely corporate rank and seniority level.
"Higher status" managerial e-mails have a level of formality, tone and lack of detail that is less apparent at mid-management levels and below, he says. Cheesy quotes, smiley faces and joke mails are more prevalent at lower management levels, where correspondence is more task-based and e-mailers allow themselves to let off steam. E-mail is an extremely valuable communication channel for today's managers, but it can be abused if used carelessly or too much, Owens says. Here are 10 basic tips for better e-mail use and management.Use e-mail as one channel of communication, but not your only one. It's fast and easy. It can document discussions. It enables high-impact messages to be sent around the world with the click of a mouse. But it also misleads bosses into thinking they can manage large groups of people through regular group e-mails, Owens says. Use e-mail wisely, but don't manage your company through it. You won't reach everybody you need to reach and your presence won't be felt. Keep it short and sweet and don't allow e-mail threads longer than a football field. Know that e-mails longer than one screen-full often aren't read right away; they get shoved to the end of the day or the next morning. Know also when it's time to put down the mouse and go talk to someone, or pick up the phone. There comes a point when further e-mailing eats up time unnecessarily. De-code your messages as much as possible. Say what you really want to have happen. Start with the subject line: Make it clear and compelling (and be willing to change it when the subject in a thread changes). Be certain about who really needs to be on the "to:" and the "cc:" line. Be clear about action items and priorities. Spell them out, as lists or bulleted items. Include a response button or some other mechanism if you must know that everyone has read and understood your message. Encourage people to respond with questions. That's akin to keeping your office door open. Save your wrath for face-to-face meetings. "Flame mails," or e-mails dripping with criticism or venom, often backfire. Terse e-mails, because they are not accompanied by the writer's facial expression or body language, can easily come across more harsh than intended. You control the message -- and the emotions on the other end -- much better by delivering it in person or over the phone. Likewise, inject humor, but keep emoticons, smiley faces and joke mails to a minimum. The smiley faces do help clarify when you are being facetious. But too many facetious mails will erode at your attempts to write serious ones. What about joke e-mails? Some companies forbid them. Send them or pass them on at your own risk, Owens says. There is usually more downside than upside, but everybody needs a good laugh now and then. Again, too many joke mails will erode your attempts to send serious ones. Consider setting a 5-minute buffer between when you send and when it goes out. Both Owens and Maureen Dolan Rosen, a human resources consultant, see value in managers being able to retract poorly written messages before they even go out. "A 5-minute rule won't hurt anyone," Owens says. In Microsoft Outlook, you can delay the delivery of messages for a specified time through the "Rules Wizard." If you're angry when you're about to write, take a step further. Get up and walk around or do something else before you write the mail. Work in time each day to answer your e-mails, or get help. If you can't keep up during a normal day, build time into your work day or delegate some of the responsibility. When is it too late to respond to someone? Never. Just make sure you have a good explanation. If you can't write e-mails effectively, get some training. Or at least get help from a secretary or subordinate. E-mail should have some role in your communication with employees, partners and others -- there is really no valid reason to avoid it. But know that any remote workers and others who don't see you regularly may judge you largely on your e-mails. Use spell-check -- and a thesaurus. Avoid typos and mangled sentences. They make you look bad. Avoid clichιs, too.
The above articles were taken from the MSN and Microsoft web sites without permission.