Email Etiquette Rules Every Business must Follow

-Muskan Pandey

Communication is one of the most important tools humans have ever learned to use.

Like any other tool, it has its own application instructions that may differ depending

on what you use it for. Personal, business, workplace, etc. - every type of interaction

with other people requires different patterns of behavior.

You may give your colleague a friendly slap on the back, but you hardly do it to your

boss. You can write your friend Hi, Jo. Busy now? Need to talk; yet your business

partner would likely receive something like Dear, John. When would it be suitable

for you to discuss our new client policies? Your body language, the way you talk,

what you tell and when determine whether you make or break particular

relationships.

However, there are fundamental issues applicable to any kind of communication:

respect, politeness, and courtesy make basic good manners that can help you build
lasting and profitable relationships with people from different backgrounds.

The same good manners should be applicable to email communication guidelines as

well. Email marketing belongs to the written type of

communication, meaning you have only one way to make a good impression - take

full advantage of words and visuals and arrange them in the most profitable way.

Here are the must-know rules for perfecting your email etiquette:

1. Subject Line Should Be Concise

The subject line is the most important component of an email. It’s what the recipient

sees before they can start reading your email and is meant to be a descriptor of your

actual email content. So it’s a good idea to keep your email subject short and to the

point. Try to summarize what you’re conveying in the email in around 5 words.

For example, if you’re emailing an update to your team that the scheduled meeting

this evening has been postponed by 2 hours, using a subject line such as “Meeting
Time Changed” instead of “Meeting Update” is a far better idea.

2. Use Spell-Check & Proofread

The spell-check tool is an incredibly useful feature that is not only available for free

today, but even comes pre-integrated with most OSs and email apps. Many apps will

automatically underline words in RED if there are any typos, and you can use

services like to get better at the English language.

However, do not blindly rely on spell-checks. We recommend reading all emails and

replies you compose, especially the ones longer than two sentences, at least twice. It

barely takes less than a minute, but goes a long way in finding any typos and

misspellings that a spell-checker won’t catch.

3. Don’t Abuse the CC Option

Most email users are unaware of the true usage of the CC and BCC options when
composing an email. You’ll often find yourself at the receiving end of an email that

has 50+ recipients CC’d in the email, where the sender has no concern about

anyone’s privacy.

Remember, the CC (Carbon Copy) option is best used when you want to send an

email to someone while keeping others in the loop, such as when sending a

quotation to a client while keeping your boss in CC. It’s important to understand that

when using the CC option, everyone involved in the email can see who’s been CC’d,

and it’s a good practice to only CC those people who are involved with the contents

of the email.

On the other hand, the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) option must be used when you

want to email a bunch of users, but don’t want them knowing who else is involved

in the email. This is great for when you are emailing the same content recipients

who don’t know each other.

that CC is better suited for an email. That said, both the CC and BCC options are from

the traditional era of email clients and there are much better tools and options

available today that go beyond the abilities offered by these two options.

4. Keep Attachments to a Minimum

The file sizes of the different file formats in use today have increased quite a lot in

the last few years, especially when it comes to high-resolution images and videos.

That’s why, it’s never a good idea to inundate someone’s email inbox with too many

attachments. Not only do you risk your email bouncing due to limits, but it may also

happen that the recipient has no space left in his account.

Instead, we recommend using online storage services such as Google Drive or

Dropbox to host your files and share links to them via email. This way, the file is also

not duplicated on both your accounts.

It’s important to understand how to introduce yourself in an email and how to start

a professional email with the right salutation, especially when you’re emailing

someone for the first time or for professional reasons. We recommend sticking to

the “Hello ,” or “Hi ,” for most emails, unless you know the recipient well enough to

go with “Hey” or “Yo”.

In most cases, if you’re emailing back and forth with the same recipient, you can

even drop the ‘Hi’s and ‘Hello’s after a few replies.

Similarly, it is just as important to understand how to end an email professionally.

When writing in a professional email format, you need to be careful about your

professional email sign off, as making a mistake there will not just lead to your

email getting ignored, but also might result in the recipient getting disinterested in

emails from you.

Email overload is already a major issue for most users these days and no one wants

to read or process email that isn’t intended for them. Our smartphones, tablets, and

computers can go crazy with notifications about the same email, and it’s critical that

we get some email sanity. As a result, you should always be careful when you use

the Reply All option. If you have just received an email that has multiple people in

the CC field, take a moment and consider whether your reply will be relevant to

them.

In most cases, your email response is only intended for a single person, like a

question about something mentioned in the previous email. In such cases, just use

the ‘Reply’ button instead of ‘Reply All’.

7. Clean-Up the Forwards

Many times, often in a work environment, you’ll need to forward an email to

someone who wasn’t part of the original email chain. They may need to copy some
information from the email, or view something for reference. In such cases, it is a

good practice to clean up your email before forwarding it to someone.

Pay special attention to any sensitive information mentioned in the email history

that you don’t want others to see and manually delete it. Remove any “Fwd: Fwd:

Fwd:” characters from the subject line, and redact any private information such as

client addresses, phone numbers or email addresses.

8. Respond to Emails in a Timely Manner

When you get an email from someone, that person expects to receive a response

from you in a timely manner. While we don’t recommend replying to an email in a

haste, as that often leads to unintended consequences, it is a good idea to not keep

emails pending for too long. Not only does it keep the other person waiting, it also

clutters up your inbox unnecessary leading to more email overload.

If you need to take time working on someone before you can respond to a sender,
we recommend sending a quick email reply saying that you’ve received their email

and will respond once you are ready.

9. Email isn’t Confidential

Email is just a block of text that is transmitted from one computer to another. Any

email can be accessed from any device, anywhere in the world. Keep this in mind

when you’re sharing any kind of content with someone via email. It’s very easy to

just forward that email to someone, or it “leaking” within an organization (we’ve all

heard those stories, haven’t we?) and many email apps will download attachments

by default to a computer. If you’re in a shared space or at work, it’s best to keep any

confidential and sensitive data away from email as much as possible.

10. Archive Email When Done

Think of your email inbox as your desk at work. Your emails are like the physical

paper files that you work with. The files that you are currently working on stay on
your desk, so they are easily accessible when you need to refer something or file

something new in them. The files for projects that you are done working on are

moved to the storage cabinet, right?

We recommend looking at your emails in the same way. The emails that you are

done reading and responding to, or don’t need to bother with again (such as email

newsletters or purchase confirmations) can be “Archived”, i.e. moved away to a

different section and making space for new ones. This way, your email inbox stays

clutter-free and you can focus on the emails that are pending.

11. Formatting is Important

People always make fun of the comic-sans font in emails, and rightly so. It is

considered a good practice to keep colorful text and non-standard fonts away when

composing an email. We recommend sticking to the default font options and text

color largely in black, with any of primary colors (Red, Green, Blue) used for

highlighting certain words.

formatting is very important. Make generous use of line breaks and paragraphs

when sending long emails. Use bold & italic text where necessary, and give headings

to sections — basically all things you’d typically do in a document.

Remember, emails should be easy for the recipient to read. If they have to take extra

efforts to read your email, you’ve already lost their attention.

12. Double-Check the Recipient

We’ve kept the most important point for the end, and that’s to double-check the

recipient. With auto-complete features and an ever-extending address book, it’s easy

to mix-up recipients and to end up sending the wrong email to someone. To avoid

this, we recommend filling out the To: field after you’re done composing and

formatting your email. This way, you also don’t mistakenly hit the Send button or

shortcut and send an email away with less than half the text that you actually
wanted to send.

Remember, email is still a core tool of communication across the internet, so it’s

important to take it seriously. We hope these 12 tips are helpful to you when you

start composing your next email.