Do your email habits show that you are a professional? Here are some common business email mistakes you may not realize you are making.
The way that we use electronic messaging like email, instant messages and SMS messages change so much depending on our intended audience. For example, when you are sending a message to one of your best friends, using chatspeak and abbreviations is perfectly acceptable and it probably wouldn't seem out of place to the recipient. When you are looking for a job however, it wouldn't be appropriate to use the same language in your cover letter or follow up email.
What makes these types of communications even trickier is that the text based world of email and instant messaging makes it difficult to express subtleties and nuances. For example, I could write an email that sounded joking and funny in my head, while the reader might get the impression that I was upset and complaining. Without verbal cues, my teasing banter would be lost.
The goal of any sort of professional interaction is to have the message be well received by the reader. We want to present ourselves as competent, mature people with a passing familiarity with what is appropriate and what isn't. The problem is that many of us are guilty of making email mistakes that have the power to make us look less than professional without even realizing it.
Here are 4 of the most common business email mistakes that you may not realize you are making:
- Not saying hello – Always include a greeting in your email. When composing a professional email, use a slightly more casual version of a business letter. You don't have to write the date and return address (because all of that information should be in the email header anyway) but you should include a greeting, then a paragraph or two in the body and close it with a simple valediction like Thank you, or Regards. In the office, you wouldn't just walk up to someone and start asking questions or telling them your news without saying hello first, so don't do it via email.
- Expecting a reply to your email immediately – This is something that drives me nuts. When you send someone an email, they aren't obligated to respond within a certain time frame. If, after, say - a half hour, you haven't gotten a reply yet, it is not okay to send an angry email asking why they didn't reply. If you need to get in contact with someone immediately and get their response as soon as possible, check into other methods of communications, like the telephone or even an instant messaging program.
- Sending an email prematurely – This is one that never seems to happen unless you are sending a very important email. For example, sending a brilliant cover letter to hiring manger and realizing that you forgot to attach a copy of your resume the nanosecond after you click “send”. While this is partly Murphy's Law, it is also partly the fault of anxiety. One great tack to prevent this from happening is to get into the habit of not writing in the recipient's email address until you have composed the email, added any attachments and proofread the copy. Although email services like Gmail offer a customizable sending delay feature (so you can have a grace period of 30 seconds or longer after clicking send before it actually sends the message) it is better to not rely on safeguards.
- Read all of your email before replying – Most email inboxes sort messages chronologically, starting with the newest first. Before you give into the temptation to reply to each email as you read it, it's better to read all of your mail first and then decide which ones to reply to. Many times you'll find that the question or concerns may have been answered or changed in the newer messages. You don't want to send irrelevant emails or appear to be clueless or not in the loop by answering things that are already handled.
Have you ever made one of these mistakes? Let me know in the comments.
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for Administrativejobsblog. Along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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