Write It Well

If SPAM refers to all the unwanted e-mail that you receive, your colleagues are likely sending more of it than anyone else.  And, since their e-mails can get through the servers, you’re seeing more of it in your inbox. Ask your colleagues to answer these questions before sending e-mail or “replying to all.”  This will reduce the amount of unnecessary e-mail they send you. 

1.  Do you have answers to quesitons they are asking?

2. Have you asked for the information?

3.  Do you need to know that they want to need something done?

4.  Will you make a decision or take action based on the information they are sending?

You might have already been concerned about the amount of time you and your employees spend managing e-mail (read, write, find).  Have you stopped to consider the impact to the bottom line?  Based on our data and calculations, a 500-person organization spends more than $4 million dollars each year on inefficient e-mail. 

The average worker receives at least 65 e-mail messages per day.  Multiply that by the number of work days in the year (240) and that means that the average worker receives 15,600 e-mails per year. 

It takes, on average, two and a half minutes to read and respond to an e-mail message.  That means that each worker spends 39,000 minutes/650 hours/81 days per year managing e-mail.

Of the 156,000 e-mails that the average worker receives each year, about thirty percent are unnecessary.  That is equal to 27 wasted days each year.

Based on a salary of $40/hour,  27 wasted days costs about $8,640 per year.  If there are 500 employees in your organization, the total cost of inefficient e-mail is $4,320,000. 

Along with seventeen other people, I got an e-mail message last week from a project manager asking for my opinion about a certain course of action.  She asked everyone to cast their vote.  So…guess what happened? Everyone voted.  But they sent their vote to all seventeen people. 

I don’t know about you, but when I get seventeen e-mail messages about a particular topic, my eyes start to glaze over and I stop paying attention or even reading the messages.  If something important comes up, I will probably miss it. 

This is a highly educated, professional group of people.  You might have thought that these people should have been smart enough not to hit “Reply All,” but that’s not really the problem. Maybe you thought that there was no other way to know what other people thought or how they cast their vote. That’s not true.  There are ways to keep everyone in the loop without generating unnecessary e-mail messages. 

The problem is that the project manager didn’t tell us to reply directly to her, not to all seventeen people.  In this case, she could have saved the production of 289 more e-mail messages by collecting the votes and sending a message back to the group to announce which strategy got the most votes and other important points that might have come up.  No one would have missed anything that way or been left “out of the loop.”  They would have received fewer e-mail messages that way.

Remember that if you’re sending an e-mail to a large group, it is your responsibility to tell them how to respond.  If you don’t specify, they are likely to “Reply All.” 

 

If people only remember one thing from our Effective E-Mail workshop, they usually remember our tips and tools for crafting effective subject lines - that’s how important they are to effectively communicating with e-mail.  There’s a great article on Marketing Profs’ site about subject lines.  I agree with some of the comments that open rates sometimes buck logic.  Here are Write It Well’s guidelines for writing effective subject lines:

1. Make them descriptive - general subject lines like “follow up” or “meeting” won’t get your boss’ attention.
2. Make them specific - again, include the relevant details.  “List of supplies needed for tomorrow” instead of “supplies” will help your reader. 
3. Make them concise and clear - same thing here.  “thx 4 yr help -I missed the bus” is neither concise or clear.
4. Change the subject line with the subject changes.  If the subject changes, summarize the thread and re-name the e-mail. 

If you’re sending e-mail to someone who is likely to read your message on their PDA, remember that your reader will only see the first part of your message and if it’s a long one, they might miss whatever you included at the bottom of the message.  Make sure that your main point is at the beginning of any message and if there is more than one point, summarize your main points at the beginning. 

Here’s an example… I sent an e-mail to a client asking three important questions including one about the location for an upcoming training.  She wrote back and offered me three paragraphs of detailed directions at the beginning of the message.  The problem was that I was reading my e-mail from my PDA so I couldn’t tell if she had answered any of my other questions because I could only see the first part of the message. 

If she had started her message by telling me that she was answering my questions and would include directions at the end of the message, I would have known exactly what the e-mail included.  Make sure that your virtual communication is virtually complete and easy for your reader, wherever they are! 

According to Xobni, a San Francisco-based start-up that has developed an Outlook add-on that helps you manage your e-mail, by 2009, workers are expected to spend 40 percent of their time managing e-mail. Xobni’s goal is to make this time as efficient and painless as possible. We were invited to be part of the beta and we’re eagerly trying it out. In fact, we’re now spending about 50 percent of our time managing e-mail because we’re trying to figure out just what the software does. Thoughts thus far? Well, other than the fact we now spend more time with our email, we like the graphs showing us when people send us email. Helps us know when we should be out of the office to avoid certain people. Threaded conversations are interesting, including a summary of all attachments you’ve ever sent, by contact. We’ll check back in a few weeks with our full evaluation. In the mean time, if you want an invite let us know. We have a few to give out.

And don’t forget, the ability to write clear, concise, compelling e-mail messages becomes more important every day. Write It Well’s business writing book, E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide, offers tips and tools for using your e-mail time more efficiently.

If you want your e-mail to be read, get to the point right away. Write It Well, the business writing experts, conducted a survey which proves that when the message isn’t clear and professinal, busy readers might skip or delete your e-mail without reading it.

People expect business e-mail to be written professionally. Seventy-two percent of those surveyed said that it is important to write clear, professional e-mail.  In fact, 88 percent reported that e-mail with typos or mistakes in grammar, punctuation, or spelling leaves a poor impression of the writer - and the writer’s organization. 

 If a business e-mail is not clear, there is a good chance that it won’t be read. More than 85 percent of respondents reported that they are likely to skip over or delete a message without reading it if the main point isn’t clear right at the beginning.

 If the subject line is not clear, recipients might not open the message.  Fifty-three percent of the respondents said they usually skip over or delete messages from people they do not know if the subject line is too vague.

For tips and tools for improving your e-mail writing skills, read Write It Well’s book about business e-mail: E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide. 

More people are reading and writing their e-mail on the move, using mobile hand-held devices such as BlackBerries or cell phones instead of computers.  There are significant advantages to being able to read and write e-mail from anywhere but there are some problems.  Here are some tips for using e-mail with hand-held devices:

1.  Keep messages short.  When you’re sending a message to someone who often reads and responds from a hand-held device, keep your message short and to the point and make sure that the most important message is at the beginning.

2.  Visualize your message.  Remember that the person who reads your message might read it on a computer screen.  Think about what your message will look like if it’s full of abbreviations, misspelled words, and grammatical errors.  Don’t forget that your message could be forwarded to others. 

3.  If you receive a message that needs a thoughtful response or one better composed on your computer, wait to respond until you’re back at your computer.  If you want to, send a quick response letting the sender know that you got the message and will respond when you have an opportunity.  It might be more efficient — and effective — to make a phone call.  

4.  Always describe attachments.  When sending e-mail to people on the move, always describe attachments (briefly) because they might not be able to see them right away.  (In fact, it’s always a good idea to describe attachments). 

5.  Turn it off!  To keep e-mail from engulfing your life, resist the urge to constantly check your hand-held for new messages.