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The Two Cardinal Mistakes of Email
Some of us spend a large portion of each day just reading and answering e-mail. Then again, others - depending on their type of business and how much they use computers, only check e-mail every few days (if that often).
But whether you're the type who's up to your eyeballs in e-mail every day, or the check-it-once-a-week type, there are two fundamental mistakes to avoid that will make your e-mail communication much more effective and efficient.
Mistake #1: What's my (subject) line?
The single biggest e-mail faux pas is leaving the Subject line blank. This is the single line that's displayed in the recipient's Inbox for each message. I assume some folks don't use it because they feel that it's redundant to type a subject and then also type a message in the body.
However, a good subject line is critical to getting your point across. Or even getting your e-mail read in the first place. If you don't type a clear, concise, descriptive subject, there's a good chance that the recipient won't even bother to open the message and read it.
Why is that? For one thing, if you don't provide a subject you're depending completely on the recipient recognizing your e-mail address (and associating it with you). Now, if he receives only two or three messages a day, you don't have much to worry about – he'll probably go ahead and open each message and look at it.
However, in these days of spam (unsolicited junk mail), it's rare for anybody to only receive a few messages. It's much more likely that the few legitimate messages that were sent by somebody he knows are buried in dozens of spam messages.
And even if he doesn't receive much spam, if he uses e-mail heavily and receives lots of legitimate messages, he has to decide which to answer and respond to first. A good subject line helps your message get responded to in a timely manner.
At its best, a subject line should stand on its own. Even if the recipient didn't open the message, he should understand the gist of it based on the subject.
For example, consider the difference between these two Subject lines:
- Read this before today's 3pm meeting with Jones!
- Janitor service switching from Wednesday to Friday"
The first subject tells him to drop everything and read the message right away.
However, he might not even bother opening the second message – all he needs to know is in its Subject line, because his only interaction with the janitor is to set his garbage in the hall to be collected, and now he knows to do that on Fridays instead of Wednesdays.
Another way you can make subject lines helpful is to differentiate between work-related e-mail and humorous messages. When I was at Microsoft, some friends and I regularly e-mailed jokes to each other (like we didn't have enough e-mail to read for work!). We always made sure to include the word "humor" at the beginning of the Subject line so that the others knew to put off reading it till later (after work or during some "decompression" time).
Mistake #2: Not using "Reply All" to keep everybody in the loop
The other common, major mistake is never using the "Reply All" feature to answer e-mail messages.
Here's the difference: if you just use the "Reply" feature, ONLY the person who sent the e-mail to you will get your reply. But if you use "Reply All," then everybody else on the To and CC lines (but not the BCC line) will also see your reply.
Why does this matter? Because the sender felt that the other people on the To and CC lines needed to be included in the discussion. By not doing a "Reply All," you just cut them out of your part of the discussion.
This would be like sitting in a meeting with several of your colleagues, and the person who called for the meeting makes an opening statement. In response, you turn your back to everybody else and only answer her. This puts her in the position of either repeating what you said to the rest of the group in order to include them (which awkwardly points out that you cut them out in the first place), or continuing the conversation with only you and ignoring the others.
Which leads to the differences between the To and CC lines, and the introduction of the BCC line.
To CC, or not to CC (or BCC), that is the question
The discussion of using "Reply" versus "Reply All" emphasizes the use of the To and CC lines, which lets you distinguish between the different roles of folks who receive your messages. Many people just use the To line. If you put somebody on the To line, then the message is obviously, blatantly intended for him. If anybody's going to reply to your message, it should be the person in the To line.
But there are two other ways to send messages to people who you aren't necessarily looking for a response from, but still need to be "in the loop." For those folks, use the CC line, which stands for Carbon Copy.
The third option is the BCC line, which stand for Blind Carbon Copy. Anybody on this line will also receive the message, but the people on the To and CC lines won't realize it. (Some e-mail programs don't display this line by default, so you'll have to check your e-mail program's Help to find out how to use it).
Note: Be sure to only include people on the BCC line who are savvy enough to know NOT to do a "Reply All." Why? Because doing a "Reply All" reveals to everybody else that she was BCC'd without the knowledge of the people on the To and CC lines.
So, if you're not currently typing in Subject lines or using the "Reply All" feature of your e-mail program, please try it. You might be surprised at how much better communicating by e-mail will work for you!