1. Forgetting to follow-up – You forgotten to follow-up with the recipient after he requested for you to follow-up either through the email again or through a phone call. Honestly, you will not look good if you are doing this all the time.  Your recipient will feel that you are always not contactable, irresponsible or not interested in attending to their emails (which usually they feel this way).  Remember to follow-up promptly.  Set a flag to follow-up if you cannot do it on the spot.  At least, it’s now in your to-do-list.
2. Sending to the wrong person – Ensure that you are sending to the right person.  Email programs are often too smart and recognize the wrong similar name in the staff directory.  Review your list of recipients before you send out to avoid confusion in them.
3. Sending mass emails – Ensure that you are not sending email to the entire organisation.  Similar to sending the wrong person, you create confusion to the entire organisation.  You are also become the “careless clown” for sending emails to recipients not intended to receive it.  And hopefully it is nothing sensitive and personal that can put you in a really embarrassing situation.
4. Forgetting the attachment – A common mistake made by most of us.  We completed the content of the email and send it out.  Later to realize that you have forgotten to attaché the document relevant to the email.  Either you follow-up with an additional email apologizing about the blunder and include the attachments or you wait for your recipient to write back asking about the missing attachments.  Therefore, review your emails before you send!
5. Not leaving contact information when you asked your recipients to contact you – Your recipient will be feeling, “DUH!” You forgotten to include your contact information such as phone number for them to get back to you after requesting them to get back to you over the phone.  One small careless mistake illustrates your carelessness in emailing and rushing to send the email out.
6. Clicking “Send” too fast – Another common mistake made by many of us.  Often we rush in our content of the email and attempt to send it in the shortest time we can.  In this way, you may fail to review your email and commit the above mentioned mistakes such as sending to the wrong person and forgetting to attach the relevant documents to the email.  Slow down cow-boy!  Review your email before you move your mouse over to the “Send” button!

1. Don’t Check Mail Every Few Minutes

This is a tough one, but it is much better and you will stay more targeted on your present work if you are not consistently checking for new mail. If you’ve a direct connection and your mail is delivered automatically, you can still wait to respond each 2 hours or so. By allotting a particular time to read and answer, you may definitely gain efficiency.

2. Flag Messages for Later Action

You got things to work on now.  Do what you’ve planned for the day.  Flag the message for later action.  In this way, you can fully focus on reading and responding to it at a later time.

3. Create Folders

Nowadays, most email programs allow you to create folders to sort your mail. This usually makes finding messages much easier and helps you sort specified tasks/email chains into a single folder for easier reference.

4. Set up Rules

Most email programs will allow you to sort your email automatically when you received it.  This is achieved based on set of rules you establish such as the content, the sender’s email address, the address to which it’s sent, etc.  With the filtering/sorting in place, it leaves the main inbox less clutter and helps you sort out your emails in their specified folder immediately.

5. Deal with Similar Responses All At Once

By sorting your mail using the methods described above, you save time by not being made to look up the same information all over again.  Thereafter, you can deal with the similar message all at once.  Furthermore, some emails consist of sends and receives which can be read at one shot with the final email that you received.

6. Templates

Use templates and signatures.  They’ll save you oodles of time for those responses that require the same or similar information on a regular basis.

7. Cut, Copy, Paste

Save typing time with Cut, Copy and Paste.  One of the powerful features of today’s operating systems and office apartments is the power to cut and paste – sometimes multiple pieces of information transferred from one document to another.   If you do not understand how to use this feature, learn today.

8. Make Heavy Use of the Delete Key

Dump data by hitting the “Delete” key.  That’s the best way to save space on your mailbox.

9. Archive Emails

If you are not intending to delete whatever is in your mailbox, try archiving the emails.  It helps you keep all the email exchanges and you never know when you need to refer back again.

10. Customize Your Program

Most people use only 20–30% of an email program’s capability.  Have you consider improving the capability usage to 50%? Investing some time in learning more of the features of your email program and then customizing it to work the way YOU want it, and you’ll marvel at your added productivity

1. Watch your filtered email folders – Most of us would have filter relevant emails into the respective folders.  It’s definitely good practice.  However, sometimes, we oversee what was filtered and in the end, oversee the email.  Therefore, always check all your filtered email folders.
2. Refrain from using you in the email – You and I can means you are drawing a line between you and the recipient.  Look at the context of the emails.   Is there anyway not to use you?  If appropriate, use we instead to promote a sense of teamwork, giving the recipient that you and him are a team in getting the work done.
3. Use smiley appropriately – Look at the context again.  Can a smiley be used?  Smiley gives a feeling of you smiling and being approachable.  It gives personal feel to the recipient.  Also, if the email is negative, smiley can help neutralize or reduce the negative context.  However, do not use smiley in an official emails.  It’s not appropriate at all!
4. Avoid writing the process of work – People want results not the process.  There’s no point in writing in details of what you have done, the impact of your work or your feelings of the work.  However, it’s not that it cannot be included.  Leave it as an annex or attachment, or place the details at the bottom of the email.  If your recipient is interested for more information, he will be able to read from it.  Else it’s definitely fine with the summary of your email.
5. Send a written understanding after a conversation – Be it a telephone call or a face-to-face verbal channel, it is always wise to write in email to summarize the conversation.  Verbal channel conversation can be misunderstood, misinterpreted or even being repudiated (meaning he may say he would deliver work but doesn’t own up saying it and you have no way of proofing it).
6. Clarify in the written understanding – Another advantage of the written understanding is that you can clarify any points that you’ve noted and capture anything missing in it.  For written understanding, people may view you as being overly cautious.  Therefore, you have to craft the email in a way that is amiable.  Example, write in a way that you are seeking to align common understanding and find out any missing gaps.
7. Be flexible with options in email conclusions – If there is a need for the recipient to make a decision, its advisable to give alternatives and provide room for clarification.  Keep the conclusion open UNLESS you want to point them to a certain direction.  Remember the golden rule; humans do not like to be forced to make a decision.
8. Follow-up on your emails sent promptly – There are multiple facades to be truly effective in emailing.  One of them is follow-ups.  Usually, there are people do not respond promptly to your email.  You have to “harass” them consistently.  Set a date for the next follow up.  Let them know the consequences of not responding the email.
9. Be professional.  Do not inject emotions in your email (again) – We’ve mentioned about it previously.  You never know who will be reading the email in future.  When you inject emotions into the email, they can be used against you if an audit arises on your work attitudes and if there are doubts on how you treat your colleagues.  We’ve seen counsellors used emails as evidences to determine if a person is bullying their colleagues mentally in the workplace.  The person was asked to be “nice” in office or she will be asked to leave.  But she never improved much and eventually she left on her own accord.
10. Do not use work email for personal email – Again, you never know who will be reading your emails.  Your mail administrator may have access to all emails and you do not like your little secrets with your boyfriends to be known.
11. Archive your emails – You will need it when you want to trace back the conversation history or find out what was previously agreed.  Also it can be use for audit purposes.
12. If unsure, just call – Finally, if you are unsure of what the hell your recipient is writing in return, just give him a call to clarify.  There’s no point bouncing back and forth in the email.  It’s more effective this way and shortens the time for clarification.

Do you have other effective email communication tips?

The answer is all about being clear and concise in your email. We’ve got 16 tips for you to deliver clear and concise message in your email.

1. Write objective of the email – What do you want to get out of it? Get a piece of work done? Convey information? Report status? Make a complaint/request?
   

   Images from VistaICO

2. Write a short paragraph summarizing the objective of the email
3. Keep subject short but striking – Remember, you want the recipient to see your email out of the tonnes of email in their mailbox.
4. Break big paragraphs into smaller ones. It’s easier to read.
5. Each paragraph is best sorted in their logical objective order for the reader to digest information in a logical sequence.
6. Keep sentences short — In this way, it’s easier to digest the information
7. Structure your sentences in this manner. Keep one character space between the words for comma. Keep two character spaces between two sentences for full stop.
8. Emphasize important information by bolding or underlining. Important information can be dates, venue or even key message.   Using colors is also a good form of emphasizing important information.
9. Avoid cliché – There is not specific value in putting them except for decoration purposes… Cliché examples are “First of all”, “First thing first”, etc.
10. Try to keep email message to fit into the normal user window – This will avoid excessive mouse scrolling. When a human sees a long email, he will usually move it to the last few to read. You do not want to let your email become the last to read, right?
11. To get things moving, set a dateline for reply. To make it even more effective, give them a call or notify them before the actual dateline (e.g. a notification email three days before actual dateline).
12. Do not use emails for chatting. You can use MSN, ICQ or a telephone for that. Furthermore, if you are aware of it, emails can be used for audit purposes…
13. Call the sender if the email starts to become a chat session. Let’s not waste time.
14. Refrain from injecting emotions in the email. If someone offended you, be professional. Do not respond with a heated email. You never know how the person will react in respond to your email.
15. If your work is urgent, do not send email. Call the recipient instead. Urgent things should not be requested via emails. A call reaches the other party directly while an email will require the message to be sent over and till the other party reads the email and responds to you. Compare the time taken between the two.
16. Do anticipate questions with your email sent. This is in particular for “incomplete” or non-objective emails. Therefore, always write email objectively and complete. No point wasting time bouncing back and forth for clarifications.

Note, having mentioned the above tips, there is still a consideration that your recipient is not thinking like you do (You factor). And they may not receive information like you do. Our advice is to understand your recipient (You factor) and customize your email accordingly for him to receive information better.