If you are making your dough in the world of communication, you cannot get away with not knowing the art of writing official e-mails. Oh! so u didn’t know there was an artform like that??? Well then Good Morning buddy. I say it is an artform becoz I truly believe it is...One cannot deny the significance of emails to our everyday work and contrary to public opinion, it is not a vanilla affair but pretty much the crux of what we do and how we do it!
According to the set standards of email etiquettes for official mails, a couple of points have to be kept in mind like:
1) The font of mail should be uniform
2) The mail should have a Pyramid Structure i.e. it should contain:
* Situation* Action items* Information* Conclusion
3) For writing use only Black or Blue color. For highlighting purpose make the word bold. Avoid using Red color as Red signifies danger, so use it when urgent.
To be formal we could use Dear Mr. /Ms. followed by Last name or Full name. We should not use Dear Mr. /Ms. followed by First name alone.
4) We should not put '/' in greetings like Hi X/Y. Instead we should say Hi X and Y.
5) We should not use 'Thanks and Regards'. Instead we should say:
Thank youRegards
6) We should not use sentences like 'As per your mail' because 'per' is used only with units like per Kg etc. Instead we should write 'According to your mail'.
7) In our mails we often write 'Please revert back'. Instead we should only write 'Please revert'.
8) For the Signature in mail, if we are sending to people in our company only then we should not write our company name in the signature because they already know that we are part of the same company but if we are sending mail to an external party like client etc then we should write our company name in the signature because there we have to brand our company name in front of others.
OK, so some of us are aware of the norms mentioned above…..however in our daily rigmarole, many a times we end up doing a hasty job and that leads to several email goof ups!
It’s happened to me quite a few times, let me recollect a few unforgettable ones:
1. I was once pitching a story for one of my Top clients to 3 publications simultaneously and I told each of them that its gonna be an exclusive! (following the rule of elimination which stated that pitch to 3/4 publications out of which one would definitely bite the bait and do my story) so I prepared a pitch mail and sent it to one journalist and the very next moment I sent it to the other…only this time I forgot to customize the mail and change the name of that journalist to the other ! So that screwed my chances of getting an exclusive in either !!!! The journalist ofcourse thought I was one cheeky kid and let me go… He and me are great friends now
2. My 3rd day at work at a new place and I sent a layout of an ad to one of my clients(the big one really!) for his approval. This was the 3rd time that the layout was going to him and each time he would suggest multiple changes. I was pretty ruffled with so much of back and forth. So I forwarded the mail to my supervisor saying, “More brainwaves…” So far all was under control, but suddenly I notice a mail from my supervisor to the client responding on the revisions suggested… where my supervisor had accidentally written above my cheeky comment and sent it to the client!!!!! A quick message recall did not help as the client had already read my comment and wrote back nasty stinkers saying all sorts of things…. Wat ensued was a heated mail war between my supervisor and the client and I got a good piece of mind from the super boss! So you see it was technically not my fault but an accident committed by my supervisor for which both of us had to face the music…and this is how I managed to ruffle some feathers on my very 3rd day of a very new job!!!!
3. Once I sent a raunchy forward by accident to a senior editor of a big business publication!!!!!! No excuses here, his name popped up on my address list automatically, and I was meaning to send it to someone with the same 1st name!
4. At another time, when gmail wasn’t working in d office, I happily used my official id to chat with my then boyfriend now husband! But again my perfect sense of timing took the best of me and callously I forwarded the entire mail trail to my colleague sitting in the next work station. She was famously known for her bootlicking skills with the boss and there flew my chances of a good appraisal! ( U might be thinking y I mailed my chat to her???? Well, I remember it was for a reason but can’t really remember d reason rite now!)
5. Also some years back while I was still in my initial stages of learning the nuances of the corporate culture and the protocols associated with it, there was another incident which was a result of my sheer ignorance….I was mailing something across to my client in Australia and accidentally hit the caps lock, further when I finished composing the mail and read it through, I thought that the caps lock made the content look more serious…so I sent the entire mail in caps lock!!!!!!!!! My client ofcourse was quick to point out that it was very rude on my part to caps lock the mail whatsoever!!!
So you see there are several occasions at work when we are running around, trying to make things work and meet unrealistic deadlines. And in the process we tend to get casual about minute details and send out mails left, right and center! Today I am doubly careful about each official mail I send but that too does not guarantee me from never committing email goof ups in the future! But email etiquettes are not really taught at B schools or even form a part of the general curriculum of communication courses… so this is something you learn on the job, end up making mistakes, rectify them and eventually set quality control standards.
I’ve listed below some of the lessons I learnt and am still learning about official emails, like:
1. Read and Re-Read your mails when you are sending it to an external stakeholder! It is not a matter of your personal image but your brand/company’s image which might be at stake!
2. Never use you’re official email id for personal correspondence!
3. If you have to share a cheeky remark with your colleagues about anything official, please DO NOT put it in writing !Go talk about it!
4. Never type an official email in all CAPS!
5. DO NOT MAIL just for the sake of it! This not only shows u have nothing better to do but also screws up the server bandwidth!
So guys this is to reiterate that emails are indeed an integral part of any corporate culture…so don’t haste them and do spend a few minutes reviewing a mail before you push the ‘Send’ button. Some goof ups can lead to dire consequences and that is something which is not under our control...But like any other corporate ethic, this too is an ongoing learning process and one should not shy away from the lessons taught on the job!
Happy Mailing !
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