E-mail Netiquette for Business - Get Articles by Jean Hanson |  |
> Get Articles > Email Marketing > E-mail Netiquette for Business E-mail Netiquette for Business Download as PDFJean Hanson jeanvaofficesolution.com VA Office Solution http://www.vaofficesolution.com With millions of us communicating via e-mail these days, we need to keep in mind the importance of e-mail etiquette (or netiquette as they say online), especially when we use it for business. Once you hit that send button, there’s no going back. Does your message represent the image you’d like portrayed for your business? Or does it make you look unprofessional, sloppy, and negative? The professionalism of your e-mail could make or break a sale, or it could cause a current customer to lose confidence in your ability to fulfill their needs. Here are some tips for creating impressive, professional-looking e-mails: 1. Your Subject line must get right to the point. If you don’t tell your customer why you’re e-mailing them, they may just press the delete key without even looking. 2. Short e-mails are best. Again, you must get right to the point within the body of your message. People just don’t have time to read long e-mails that ramble on and on. 3. Be sure to cover all your bases. E-mail is not the fastest method of communicating, so be sure to answer all your customer’s questions thoroughly, and try to anticipate any questions that might come back to you. Otherwise, you could spend days e-mailing back and forth until all questions are answered. 4. Write your e-mail as if you were writing a letter to your customer. Use proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling. Use complete sentences and break up your message with paragraphs. If you’re not the best speller, use your spell checker before sending. And be sure to proofread your e-mail! I’m such a perfectionist; I usually read mine twice before sending ;-) 5. Although you should be professional with your business e-mail, you don’t want to appear cold, or uncaring. Use a friendly tone; write as if you were speaking face-to-face with your customer. 6. Don’t use lots of HTML in your business e-mail. In other words, no color or fancy fonts that are hard to read. It’s best to use plain text when sending business e-mail. Save the fluff for friends and family. 7. Answer your e-mail in a timely manner. Nothing is more frustrating than sending e-mail and not getting a response for several days – it’s as frustrating as someone not being courteous enough to return your phone calls. 8. Don’t use e-mail to solve problems! E-mail is a wonderful tool, but if you’re having a problem with a customer, it’s best handled in person, or over the telephone. Oftentimes, a message is misunderstood because we aren’t sure of the tone of the e-mail – were they being funny, flippant, angry, or what? 9. If you’re sending the same e-mail back and forth, cut out areas that are no longer necessary. Send back only that part of the message to which you need to reply to. 10. Use a Signature Line. E-mail programs allow you to set up different signatures for different purposes. For your business e-mail, you might want to include your full name, business name, phone number, and a link to your website. For your personal e-mail, you might want to do something more fun and informal. How useful did you find this article? This article can be downloaded freely from http://www.get-articles.com and used on your website or in your ezine so long as the author is credited and their resource box left intact. You should not change any links in the article, and where the article is used on a website it's links should be clickable. Please see our terms and conditions page for more information: http://www.get-articles.com/authors-publishers-terms.php |
|
Top Articles |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
May 25, 2012 © www.Get-Articles.com. All Rights Reserved.