Spring Cleaning: Cleaning Up Your Inbox

With the arrival of spring growing near, we have all been thinking about “spring cleaning”. For some of us spring cleaning also means organizing and all out sprucing up the house, office, and even our email inbox.

An article written by The Productivity Pro’s Laura Stack titled “12 tips for better e-mail etiquette” gives a great summary of best business practices for email. You can find the original article here, but I have provided a brief summary as well. 

Keeping emails short, concise, and utilizing correct grammar and punctuation are key in keeping your emails professional. It is also important to correctly utilize the CC and BCC fields on emails. One should always keep in mind that emails are not private, and can easily be forwarded along. Never include personal or financial information, such as SS and Credit Card #s in emails, as they can easily be printed.

Formatting of emails is also important. One should always use correct capitalization, and refrain from typing emails in all caps. Typing in all caps indicate the message is being shouted, and is rather hard to read. Always be sure to add a signature line on original emails, as this indicates who is sending the message and their contact information, which the reader may not have.

Another best practice is to devote each email to a particular topic, not cover multiple items in one email. Subject lines should always contain a specific topic that summarizes your email. For example, if you have questions regarding coverage amounts on your home insurance and you would like to change your health insurance deductible, one should compose two separate emails, each with specific subject lines for the respective topic. This reduces confusion and often times leads to more timely responses from recipients. Specific subject lines also make emails more searchable via Outlook, which is important for those that receive multiple emails a day.

Even though we all try to practice great email etiquette on a daily basis, it’s always a good idea to have a quick ‘brush up’ on things.