10 Effective Email Rules

Email is a primary business tool in most companies. It is important to use email effectively; otherwise email becomes a productivity killer for the whole organization.

1. Keep emails short

Try to keep emails as short as possible, without omitting important details. If there are multiple topics or different actions required, consider splitting the email into a few separate emails. Email length depends on the subject and context, and sometimes long texts are required. However, short emails drive more attention and leave less room for errors in interpretation.

2. Use meaningful subjects

The subject is important, as it draws attention and sets up thecontext for of the email that follows. It should be short and convey the topic of the email. If it is difficult to come up with a meaningful and short subject for an email, it may be a sign that the email contains too many different topics, and you should split it to multiple emails.

The subject can also be used to help readers to make quick decisions about spending time on reading the email right away or deferring reading the email for later. Useful phrases to start the subject line:

• ACTION REQUIRED: — for emails that require an immediate action, don’t forget to include the data for the deadline to the subject of the email. Useful for email that require only one action.
• IMPORTANT: — for emails that require immediate attention, or include multiple action items to multiple people.
• Notes: — for meeting notes. If you have recurrent meetings on the same topic, include the date of the meeting into the subject.
• FYI: — for emails that do not require action

3. Carefully selected recipients in TO and CC lists

Rule of thumb — list of people that should respond or react to the email should be in TO line, other people added for information should be in CC line. Many people configure their email clients to sort emails with their names in TO line to a higher priority, and CC to lower priority — and this allows to be more efficient dealing with important tasks first. Carefully picking people in recipient lists you are saving the time of other people.

If someone if not needed in the communication anymore, move that person to BCC line, adding a note to email “moving John Smith to BCC” to make sure everyone understands that you have not just dropped a person from a conversation. Also, this will also tell the recipient on BCC that no further actions requested from them.

Think every time you use ‘Reply All’ button about the list of recipients.

4. Summarize and highlight important content when forwarding or adding new people

You may know the content of email communication well, but new people may not be aware of the context, or don’t have time to read long threads. As a courtesy to people you add, summarize the content of the email thread, or highlight the most important pieces of communication in color. Summary or highlighting will save time for new recipients and also help to avoid misunderstanding while ensuring proper action from them.

Be very careful with forwarding emails — double check the content, and make sure that it is ok to forward the email to the new recipient. Sometimes emails may require reductions, or may not be appropriate for sharing with new people at all.

5. Clearly point to people who should take action

If there are more than one recipient, clearly present who is supposed to take action. Highlight names of people related to specific tasks. Add deadlines if those are different for different tasks listed in an email.

If there are many tasks to one particular person and a few to other people, consider sending a separate email to that person, cc’ing other people who may need to know about those tasks.

6. Do not use sarcasm, do not joke if you have any doubts

Emails are bad in conveying emotions. If you are not 100% sure that recipients will understand your joke — remove it from your email. Do not ever use sarcasm — all of the smiley faces in the world will not fix potential communication problem.

7. If you can’t provide a response or complete a task now — provide an estimation on timing

Although email is an asynchronous communication channel, and usually the response is not required instantly, people still wait to get a response as soon as possible. To avoid follow-up emails and make sure other people know what is going on — try to respond as soon as possible. If you need time to prepare a proper response or need time to complete a task, provide an estimated timing, and make sure you respond by that time — either with the result or requesting additional time. Business communication is much efficient than there are no surprises.

8. If email may require multiple follow-ups — call

In case there are multiple topics for discussion, you need to brainstorm ideas or learn a lot of things that may need a lot of follow-up questions — call or set up a meeting. Save time on lots of emails that you can replace with one brief call for the mutual benefit of all participants of the email thread.

9. Be careful with attachments

Make sure you have included all of the needed attachments, and they contain what is intended. Be aware that not everyone can receive very large files — compress the files as needed or use file sharing services like Acronis Files, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc.

If you are sending a presentation or an office document that contains graphics, use ‘Compress Pictures’ feature in Microsoft Office. However, make sure that compression level is suitable for the attachment — if you need print quality, do not use web or email level compression.

10. Formatting is important

Make your emails easy to read. Split texts in paragraphs, use bullets where appropriate. Highlight important content to draw attention to key ideas or tasks in your email. Easier it is to read an email, easier it is to understand and provide a proper response, take a proper action. Think about time other people may need to spend reading and understanding your email — that time contributes to overall team efficiency, as well as the quality of the response.

Those rules are simple and not covering all of the aspects of email communication. Although, following those rules dramatically improves the business performance of any organization.