One medium whose rules you should strive to always remember is email (electronic mail) because, unlike the other electronic mediums (which are mostly used to relay casual messages), email is often used to convey messages that are very consequential and a bad e-mail can prove costly.
Examples of consequential messages conveyed via email include job applications, confirmation of employment, application for funding, request and sharing of quotes/invoices, meeting appointments, usernames and passwords, etc.
Therefore, considering how important the messages conveyed via email are, it is important that you always format and share/send all your e-mails appropriately to achieve effective communication.
Here are four things you should take note of as you write and send your e-mails.
1. Do not expect an immediate response
You should not use email to convey messages for which you require an immediate response or reaction from the recipient. Although your e-mail may be delivered to the recipient’s inbox immediately after you send it, there is no guarantee he/she will attend to it immediately.
Email is classified as a form of asynchronous communications and therefore, no one is really obliged to read or respond to an e-mail immediately they receive it.
If, however, you send an e-mail that requires immediate attention, always follow it up with a synchronous form of communication (such as a voice or video call) to the e-mail recipient and ask them to attend to your e-mail.
2. Do not include times-specific greetings
Since, as explained in 1) above, you do not know when the person you have emailed will read your message, time-specific greetings should not appear in your e-mail.
It may seem appropriate for you to begin your e-mail with “Good morning, Sir” because you are writing your e-mail in the morning. However, the recipient may read it in the evening, and at that time, your well-intended “Good morning, Sir” greeting will only make your e-mail appear unprofessional.
The other reason to avoid including time-specific greetings in your e-mails is that a lot of email communication happens across time zones due to international travel and international collaborations. This means that even if your e-mail recipient reads your e-mail the moment it arrives in their inbox, a greeting that was appropriate in your time zone may not make sense at all to the recipient.
3. Never misspell the recipient’s name
Misspelling the name of the person you are writing to is like hoping to get someone’s attention by calling them by a name that is not theirs. It doesn’t work.
Your goal should not be to write and send e-mail quickly but rather to compose and send e-mails that help you communicate effectively.
Effective communication hinges on keeping your audience interested in your message(s) and misspelling the name of the recipient of your e-mail significantly reduces their (the recipient) interest in the content of your e-mail.
4. Apply text formatting
There is room to be artistic as you compose your e-mails. You can add some art and design to your text to make it attention grabbing. As long as you think that styling your text will make your e-mail communicate better, do it.
The other important role that text styling can play in your e-mail is highlighting vital information which you do not want your receiver to miss (but think they may miss). Information about, for example, dates/deadlines, key assignments, etc., can be made to stand out from the rest of the text by making it bold or styling it with a different colour.
The author is a communications expert
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