In today’s world, many professionals rely on email—a quick and convenient communication tool—as their chief form of communication. Personally speaking, I use email daily to keep in touch with almost all my clients and vendors. With so many messages going out—sometimes as many as a hundred a day—it is important to always keep in mind the proper etiquette for business emails.

Here are a few tips and tricks we at Market Connections use to send effective emails with a positive impact:

1. Re-read your message before sending it. Just step back and take a moment to consider your wording, and who the message is going to prior to clicking send.
2. Still not sure about sending? Ask a colleague for their thoughts. If you are still unsure about the impact of your message, get a trusted colleague to critique the message for you. A few moments of help up-front may save a lot of time spent apologizing after the message is gone.
3. Can you reach out to the person more effectively in person or over the phone? Face-to-face and over the phone communications can be more timely, more personal, and much more effective than back-and-forth emails.
4. Stop and reconsider all forwards. Jokes and cute stories may be amusing fare for friends and family, but keep your business contacts strictly business.

Want more tips and tricks to send great emails? Check out Send: The Essential Guide to Email for the Office and Home, a book dedicated to making emailing easier, written by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe.

We want to hear from you! How important is email in your daily life? What tips do you have for improving email communications? Leave a comment to let us know!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 9:54 am and is filed under Current Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.