6 Tips for Email Success

If you want to succeed in your life and career, you must become a dynamic communicator.  In “Straight Talk for Success,” I suggest three things you must do to become a dynamic communicator.  You must be a great conversationalist.  You must write clearly and succinctly.  You must be able to present well to groups of all sizes.

Email has become the dominant form of written communication.  People judge you by the quality of your emails.  However, all too often we make the mistake of pounding out an email and hitting send without much thought.

This is not a good idea.  Are you guilty of this?  Do you take the time to read and edit your emails, or do you just send them?

If you don’t take the time to read and edit you emails, you are losing out on an opportunity to impress others – both inside and outside your company.

Here are a few tips about email that have served me well over the years.  I’m interested in hearing what you think about them, and in hearing any tips for effective emailing that you’ve developed.

• Use email only when you must.  Face to face or telephone conversations are the best ways to communicate with others.
• Send emails only to people who actually need the information.
• Think about how the person receiving your email is likely to react to it.  One could way to do this is to ask yourself if you would use the same words if you were meeting in person.
• Remember that many communication cues – like gesture, body language and voice intonation – are absent from email.  That’s why sarcasm, irony and humor can bomb in emails.
• Wait at least an hour, and preferably overnight before answering emails that anger you.  You don’t want to make a bad situation worse.
• Finally, email lasts forever – and there is no such thing as a confidential email.  Don’t send an email that you wouldn’t want anybody and everybody to read.  Assume that any email you send is permanent. 

The common sense point here is simple.  If you want to succeed, you have to become a dynamic communicator – in person, in writing and in presentations.  You need to write in a clear, succinct, easy to read manner.  Emails can be especially tricky.  You need to read and edit your e mails before sending them, and you need to make sure that your emails communicate the message you intend to send.

Those are my thoughts on communication in general and email in specific.  What do you think?  Please respond by leaving a comment.  As always, thanks for reading.  I encourage and welcome your thoughts and comments.

Bud