Schubert Solutions

E-mail has become ubiquitous in nearly all business dealings.  Postal mail, with its archaic delivery system, is now often referred to as ‘snail-mail.’  E-mail can deliver your letter in seconds, where as it takes postal workers days.  Think of the efficiency!

Of course, if you’re living here in the 21st century, you know all of this.  You use e-mail on a daily basis.  You log in on your phone while you’re waiting at the DMV and shoot off a couple of messages to your clients and colleagues.  You procrastinate important projects by clicking your e-mail’s ‘refresh’ button every five minutes.  But what has this efficiency cost you and your business?

• Bad first impressions. If you’re using text-speak (U know who U R) or simply not checking back over your messages before you hit send, you might be sending out e-mails rife with grammatical and mechanical errors.  Error-laden messages tell your clients and colleagues that you are too lazy to proofread your own e-mails, that they aren’t worth your time, or worse:  that you are practically illiterate.
• URGENT! There is a time and a place to convey an urgent message.  Maybe your e-mail truly is urgent and you need an immediate response.  However, by consistently exaggerating the urgency of your messages, you ensure that no clients will take you seriously when you really do have an urgent e-mail.  Ever heard of The Boy Who Cried Wolf?
• The 2 GB Signature. Imagine if it took you a couple of minutes (and lets be honest, minutes = hours in internet-speak) to load every. single. message.  That’s what you’re doing to your clients when you have absurdly long e-mail signatures, complete with kooky GIFs or JPGs.  Keep it simple, with your name and contact information.  Your clients will thank you.
• Oops, wrong e-mail address! When you dial a wrong number, you can easily apologize and hang up before any real damage is done.  This isn’t always the case when you are sending an e-mail.  Suppose you compose a perfectly written rant about a frustrating client and quickly send it off to your cubicle-mate.  At least, you meant to send it to your cubicle-mate.  With the wrong click of a button, you have sent said rant directly to the client it defames.  Things get even more complicated if you accidentally send out confidential information to the wrong address.
• Reply all. We’ve all heard horror stories about the ‘reply all’ button.  Why, oh why does it exist?  You receive a message about a particularly hideous new office policy and decide to make a snide or sarcastic comment to a friend, referencing the new policy.  Except you hit ‘reply all,’ so now you’re packing up your things because your boss did not appreciate your unflattering analogies involving her/him, no matter how clever.

 
E-mail etiquette is certainly not a new idea, but it is becoming increasingly ignored.  Even in the business world, where correspondence should always be professional quality, there are plenty of folks who refuse to check back over their messages and think before they hit send.

It’s really as simple as this:  Conscientiousness in your correspondence reflects well on your business.