How to Become a Better E-mailer

Hello to all 1.5 of you who still visit this blog (via Google searches).

Although I stopped blogging here about a year ago, I thought a post I wrote yesterday at No Straw Men would be appropriate to plug at Digital Flacking.

Here's a teaser (click here for the full text):

1. When responding, reply to the original e-mail rather than starting a new one. This way, you minimize confusion about what the original e-mail said, and the correspondence is contained in a single document, which makes everything easy to reference later.

2. Because we send so many e-mails today, it’s tempting to skip small chat and get right to the point. Yet while concision is commendable, being impersonal can often be perceived as being impolite. For this reason, I always begin e-mails with the recipient’s name, or at least a salutation. Compare receiving the message, “How’s XYZ coming along?” to “Hey Jill: How’s XYZ coming along?” This small courtesy acts as a cushion, buffering the professional with a touch of the personal.