Email Etiquette: Auto-Responder

Auto-Responder

If you only check your emails once a day, turn on your auto-responder and include the information on your email habits, when you will get back to them, and an alternate method to reach you if it’s important. There is nothing worse than not knowing why someone hasn’t responded to a time sensitive matter. It only takes a couple clicks of the mouse to set your auto-responder feature and it is so considerate!

These are just a few examples of email etiquette and there are a slew of others out there. Spell check is another that makes everyone's life so much easier.

What other examples do you have for email etiquette?

Happy Organizing!

Suzanne Babb

Email Etiquette: Sensitivity

Sensitivity

The same holds true with sensitivity levels of emails as it does with CYA. If an email you are sending sounds or reads peevish, try using different verbiage, include a smiley face, or just call the person on the phone. The precautions you take now will save you valuable time, energy and headaches later.

By the way, there isn’t a smiley face big enough to counter act some scenarios. Don’t fire, reprimand, or otherwise scold a co-worker via email. Talk about tacky!

Email Etiquette: CYA

CYA

We have all heard the expression of CYA, “Cover Your Ass”. Sometimes we put specific information in emails to cover our fannies or print it out and save the hard copy when it’s really important, but how about NOT sending an email because it could come back to bite you in the butt?

Regardless of whether it’s petty cattiness about a co-worker, sexual harassment, or an email that could be misconstrued as snippy, if you think there is even a remote chance that someone can use it against you, don’t send it. Call the person or have a face-to-face conversation with them, don’t email.

Of course, if the exact opposite is true and you need a paper trail, then definitely email!

Email Etiquette: Subject Lines

Subject Lines

Don’t you hate it when someone interrupts you or drastically changes the subject while you are talking? I know I can’t stand it. It’s beyond rude and the same can be said to irrelevant or non-existent subject lines in emails.

For instance, you are sending over the new pricing to a client how do you label it so he can quickly identify the importance of the email? Do you leave the subject line blank? Heck no! You put in the subject line 2008 Updated Pricing. You don’t just grab the email the client sent you with Meeting Request in the subject line and send the pricing to him. If you did that, he may never read it because he would assume it’s just something in regards to the meeting you already had and irrelevant.

Another scenario would be his inbox is completely overwhelming, he hasn’t had a chance to check emails, and after a couple of days he finally remembers that you sent him pricing. When he does a search for your email with something labeled pricing, he can’t find it. Do you really want to that to happen? Heck no! So take the few extra seconds it takes to create a new email with a relevant subject line.

Having great subject lines can also help streamline your processes and get faster feedback. Let’s take the pricing scenario again; you need to get the pricing approved by your supervisor before sending it to the client. Why not create a subject line that reads: “Needs Approval: Acme Client Pricing”? Your supervisor can visually see that he has an action required of him, he knows who it is for and what it is. This is a great way to save him time; you time, and get back to your client in a timely fashion.

Email Etiquette: ALL CAPS

Don’t put your elbows on the table, don’t talk with your mouth full, and don’t play with your food. These are the things you and your parents have been repeating for years. It is so important to have good etiquette in life and the same holds true with email.

We are going to cover some of the biggest email no-no’s, why it’s rude, and how you can correct some of your own unintentional bad habits.

ALL CAPS

One of the biggest email no-no’s is using ALL CAPS. ALL CAPS is the equivalent to screaming at someone in cyber space and who likes to be screamed at? However, using ALL CAPS to emphasize a word is fine, but to send an email with all capital letters is just plain rude.

Tips and Tricks to Keep My Inbox Clean

We just went through a lot of information on how to keep your inbox cleaned out and maintained. We determined your email organizing style, we talked about creating routines, and we even figured out some solutions to some of our biggest issues.

Now we are going to take one last final look at some of the quick ways you can maintain control! You don’t necessarily need to do all of the little suggestions, as a matter of fact there is such as a thing as being over organized. I want you to pick just a couple of things you can and will do to keep your inbox looking spic and span. Don’t over commit, we don’t want to set you up for failure so just pick your favorite tricks and write them down.

Tips and Tricks I Can Do

ü Create specific folders for emails

ü Create Rules for incoming emails

ü Clean out my inbox every evening

ü Clean by conversation once a week

ü Set up my Auto-Archive feature

ü Do & Delete

ü File away my emails as they come in

ü Set up different email addresses for different types of emails

ü Create a daily routine to deal with emails

Once you have your tips and tricks determined I want you to put them into your routine. Use your calendar if you need to and get into the habit now. What other solutions can you come up with to gain control of your inbox?

Tomorrow, we are on to Etiquette!

Happy Organizing!

Keeping the Inbox Clean: The Last Step

Regardless of which style best represents you, you need to make sure you remember the 5 important steps of maintaining a successful inbox.

1. Address what emails need action as they come in

2. Remove emails you do not need

3. File away other emails

4. Create Rules to keep your inbox tidy

5. Set up your routine

Now that your inbox is clean let’s do a couple of things to make sure it stays that way. We will have one step that will be completely automatic and you won’t have to do a damn thing, the other step will definitely take discipline on your part.

Let’s start with the easy step first, shall we?

We are going to set up a few rules for incoming emails into your inbox. An email Rule is a wonderful little feature that automatically sends an incoming email to a place you designate within your inbox. Right now all of your emails are going straight into your inbox as a default. However, we just finished creating folders for a lot of your emails.

Imagine if all of the pesky newsletters, meeting notes, sales reports, etc. automatically went into their respective folders. You wouldn’t have to worry about moving them, having them clog your inbox, and you can review them at your leisure. Creating Rules effectively can be one of the biggest allies you have when it comes to keeping your inbox clean. You can create Rules based on subject or sender and you can change or delete it at any time. If you are afraid you will miss an email from your boss because of the massive amounts of emails you receive in a day, make her a Rule. Every time she sends you an email it will go into her folder and it will be in bold with the number of unread emails. You will never have to worry about missing another email or dropping the ball on a project because you didn’t see the email.

Now that the easy part is set up, let’s move on to what YOU have to do. Creating a routine for your emails is essential to maintaining a tidy inbox. A routine is something you set up for yourself, that makes sense to you, and is easy for you to do on a regular basis.

For example; you could do something as simple as:

1. Address emails as they come in; act, move, or delete.

2. Before you leave for the day, clean out your inbox.

Regardless of your daily routine, you need to figure out what works best for you and you need to continue to do it every single day. Make it a daily goal to have your inbox completely cleaned out before you leave or only have what you need in your inbox. This way when you come back to work the next morning you are ready to start fresh. Very similar to cleaning up your desk before you go home for the night.

Keeping the Inbox Clean: Visual

Visual

For those of you who are more Visually inclined, you have the most options available to you. Are you going to color code with flags, categorize by topic or action type? What about folders?

A very successful way of organizing your inbox would be to utilize two out of the three solutions. You could create folders similar to the Logical organizing style and then use flags to organize your action emails.

You could also try using your inbox in an Inspirational format and implement categories and color coding as your solutions. The categories in this scenario would replace using folders.

Regardless of which style best represents you, you need to make sure you remember the 5 important steps of maintaining a successful inbox.

1. Address what emails need action as they come in

2. Remove emails you do not need

3. File away other emails

4. Create Rules to keep your inbox tidy

Keeping the Inbox Clean: Logical

Logical

For the Logical organizers, we need to start by finding homes for the emails that are left. So let’s determine what folders make sense to you and your business.

By Client

Project

Work

Personal

Department

Action Type

What else can you think of?

Once you have your folders created, go ahead and start filing emails away. Sometimes it is easier to file away large groups of emails by sender or by subject. So be sure and take advantage of the sorting feature built into your inbox. You may also want to take advantage of the “Rules” feature for some of your recurring emails, such as weekly reports.

Almost finished with the organizing style solutions for keeping your inbox clean. Tomorrow we wrap it up with the Inspirational Organizing Style!

Happy Organizing!

Suzanne Babb

Keeping the Inbox Clean: Inspirational

Inspirational

Look through the emails that are left in your new “Inbox September 08” folder. Anything that requires some sort of action on your part, I want you to move it back into your regular inbox. This does NOT mean that I want you replying to them right now. As a matter of fact, I don’t want any of you doing anything with the emails other than moving them around and sorting. No quick replies, no “oh it will only take a sec” excuses. Nada, nothing, zilch. You can go back and play when we are done.

Once you have all of your action needing emails in your Inbox, I want you to decide how you want to handle the other emails you have. Are you comfortable doing a “Do and Delete”? Or do you want to play it safe and keep the emails in the folder for a bit longer? I will leave that entirely up to you and your safety net.

Once you have finished transferring the emails back to your inbox, I want you to write down how many emails you have now!

=) Not too bad, is it? Tomorrow, we will help out all of you Logical Organizers!

Until then,

Happy Organizing!