Essential Business Email Etiquette

You’re a professional at what you do, that seems a safe assumption. If you’re a Small Business Owner, and you’re reading this blog, you’re clearly a professional who understands the importance of conducting yourself like one.

Regrettably, embarrassing mistakes that tarnish your professional reputation aren’t always obvious, and you sometimes need someone else to help you avoid them. Luckily, we’re here to do exactly that.

Follow us as we lead you through the essential rules of etiquette you should be following in all of your professional email correspondence.

Introduce Yourself to New Recipients

It’s important to remember when interacting with someone new that they might not have a clue who you are. This is especially true when communicating with Customers, a nameless, faceless, voice from the void isn’t the most trustworthy to consumers.

There’s no need to narrate your life story to them, but do make sure they know your name, position in the organization, and a little about what they should expect from correspondence with you.

Starting things off on the right foot by taking a moment to introduce yourself will make all your subsequent communications go a lot smoother.

Respond in a Timely Fashion

No one likes being kept waiting, this is an inescapable fact. It doesn’t matter whether it’s queueing at the supermarket, being kept on hold when making a phone call, or waiting for a response to your email. The longer you have to wait, the more the frustration builds.

Now this doesn’t mean you’re required to always respond instantly, unless you’re some sort of emergency contact, emails don’t require a response the very instant you receive them. What they do require is a response within a reasonable timeframe.

A good rule of thumb is to respond to emails within 24 to 48 hours of when you receive them. For emails with content that will take you time to action or solve, make sure to send a response notifying the sender of this fact. People respond a lot better to waiting when they know why they’re having to wait.

Don’t Misuse the Reply All Button

Reply All is a very useful email feature, allowing for quick and convenient updating of a large number of correspondents, and is especially powerful when combined with CC and BCC.

But with great power comes great responsibility, misusing the feature will quickly earn you the ire of everyone in the email chain you’re pestering. Before hitting Reply All, make sure that everyone in the chain actually needs to hear what you’re about to say. If they don’t, you’re cluttering up their inbox, wasting their time, and reducing their productivity.

Use the Reply All button only when it’s appropriate and you’ll find yourself with better and more productive relationships.

Get to the Point Quickly

You need to state the point of your email within the first two sentences. If you take any longer than this to get to the point you start to lose your recipient.

No one has all day to sit around and read long winded emails, and opening an email to be greeted by a wall of text tends to have an immediate soporific effect. If there’s lots to cover in your email, use dot points to make the information more accessible, and make sure not bury the important parts under a mountain of preamble.

The quicker your email gets to the point, the quicker you’ll get a response and the better that response will be.

Be Careful What Information You Include

An important aspect of email communication that not enough people seem aware of is that it provides a permanent written record. Everything you include in an email can be shared far and wide, and there’s no way to retrieve it once it’s out there.

Consider carefully what you include in your emails, whether it’s a good idea to include personal information or discuss sensitive business information. Handling sensitive information poorly can be not just embarrassing for you and your business, it can potentially land you in legal trouble.

Before hitting send, make sure everything in your email would be okay to be posted up on the wall for all to see, and reconsider anything that seems like a bad idea.

It’s easy to damage your professional reputation, and very difficult to fix it. Proper email etiquette will help to ensure you maintain a reputation for professionalism, don’t neglect it.