Secrets of business email-correspondence
Work And Study / / December 25, 2019
What is e-mail? In today's business world, it is:
- Your face. It is through email can create a positive image in the eyes of the counterparty or spoil the first impression.
- Your work tool. A lot of communication with the outside world takes place by email. So good in possession of the instrument, you can simplify your life great.
- A powerful distraction. Outside world is trying to get you to distract and mislead astray via email.
From these positions and look to work with e-mail. Let's begin with a simple.
letters decoration
I use Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client, so I will talk from his example. Create a new letter and go from top to bottom of the list of fields.
Coma. Copy. Hidden copy
Maybe someone does not know, but the "To" in Mozilla can be changed to "Cc" or "Bcc".
- whom: Write the main destination or multiple destinations separated by semicolons.
- Copy: Write to who should read the letter, but of whom we do not expect a reaction.
- Hidden copy: Write to who should read the letter, but must remain anonymous for the rest of recipients. Especially appropriate to use for mass mailings of business letters, such as notifications.
Wrong in mass distribution to specify recipients by field "Copy" or "To". Several times a year I receive letters in which recipients listed 50-90 in the "Copy". There is a violation of privacy. Not all of your recipients need to know who else you're working on a similar topic. Well, if it is familiar with each other people. And if in the list of competing companies, which do not know about each other? At least one must be prepared for extra explanation, as a maximum - an end to cooperation with one of them. Do not do like this.
Correctly mass mailing sent to your name, and all recipients to put in the field "hide the copy."
Letter subject
The importance of the subject line is often written (sometimes sensibly) in their corporate blogs professional services dispatches. But there often is a speech about selling the letters, where the subject line solves the problem of «email should open."
We also discuss the daily business correspondence. Here is the topic solves the problem of "letter and its author should be easy to identify, and then to find." And your diligence to come back to you in the form of karma numerous letters of response, only with prefixes Re: or FwdAmong which will have to find the right letter on the subject.
Twenty letters - is the amount of one-day correspondence of middle management. On Entrepreneurs and business owners do not speak, they have a number of letters is sometimes surpasses 200 and more per day. Therefore, once more: do not send emails with a blank theme.
So, how to properly formulate the subject line?
We are in his "heaven" is recommended for external letters to write in the subject: "The Sky
Error number 1: Only the company name in the subject line. For example, the 'Sky' and all. Firstly, surely you are one of your company communicate with the counterparty. Secondly, no sense a theme does not contribute, because your company name, and so can be seen from the address. Third, guess how it will look your own box with this approach to communications? Like this.
It is convenient to look at such topics?
Error number 2: Flashy marketing title. It's great if you know how to write such headlines. That's just whether the use is appropriate to these skills in business correspondence? Remember the purpose of business subject line: do not sell and provide identification and search.
Wrong | Correctly |
Things to buy axes at a reasonable price! | Commercial offer for the supply of axes |
We must hurry to consult interest! Rodion is on the way! | To harmonize the act of Interest checking with Alyona Ivanovna |
ATTENTION! Porfiry Petrovich solved the mystery of Raskolnikov, and solve our problems | The proposal from the consultant: the psychological deduction |
»
Text of the letter
There are many guides on writing texts for different occasions. For example, a lot of useful information at Maxim Ilyahova, Alexander Amzin and other masters of the word. I advise you to read their articles at least to increase the overall awareness and improve the overall style of writing.
In the process of writing letters, we must consistently make several decisions.
courtesy question. At the beginning of the letter can be blurred in courtesy or affection in the spirit of "My dear Rodia, for two a little over a month, as I have not talked to you in writing, from which she was suffering, and even other night did not sleep, I am thinking. " Very polite and very costly, both in time by writing this entry, and in time a person on his reading. Correspondence after business, remember? Not letter-writing contest and not an Raskolnikov's mother and business correspondence.
We respect your time and recipient!
Represent and resemble the circumstances of love makes sense only in the first message sent after the fleeting meeting at an exhibition. If this is the continuation of cooperation or current correspondence, in the first letter on the day of writing: "Hello, John," in the second and later: "John ...".
appeal. I have always been concerned with the question, who to turn to in the letter, if the number of recipients. Recently, I wrote a letter, addressed to the three girls named Anna. Not doubting, I wrote, "Dear Anna" never soared. But so lucky not always.
What if the recipient of three, or even seven, and they do not carry the same name? You can list the names: "Good afternoon, Rodion, Pulcheria, Avdotya and Petr Petrovich." But it is long and takes time. It is possible to write: "Dear Colleagues".
I for myself use a rule to apply the name to the one who stands in the "To" field. And to those who are in the copy does not apply at all. This is usually at the same time allows to define more precisely one (!) Letter to the addressee and the purpose of this letter.
Citation. Often the correspondence is a conversation with questions and answers - word dialogue. Good practice to not delete the history of correspondence and write your answer on top of quoted text that, returning to this correspondence within a week, it was easy to read the dialogue from top to bottom in descending date.
For some reason, the default setting in Mozilla should "Position the cursor after the quoted text." I recommend it to change the menu «Tools» → «Account Settings» → «Preparation and addressing." It should be so.
The purpose of the letter. Business letters are of two types:
- when we just inform the interlocutor (eg, a report on the work done over the last month);
- and when we want something from the interlocutor. For example, he agreed to the attached invoice for payment.
As a rule, encourage letters many times more than the reportable. If we want to achieve something from the source, it is very important to say about this in a letter in plain text. The call to action should be accompanied by a message on behalf of and go the last sentence in the letter.
Wrong"Porfiry Petrovich, I know who cut down an old lady."
Correctly"Porfiry Petrovich, I cut down an old lady, please accept my arrest on measures tired to suffer!".
Why correspondent must for you to think, what to do with this letter? After all, it can take and the wrong decision.
Signature text. She must be. Especially all e-mail clients allow you to customize autosubstitution signature eg the classic "Sincerely ...". In Mozilla this is done in the menu «Tools» → «Account Settings."
To write or not to write the contacts in the signature - a private matter. But if you are somehow connected with the sales - it is obligatory to write. Even if the transaction does not take place on the basis of communication in the future, you can easily find on the contacts of the signature.
Finally, another feature of the message body for those interviewees who do not like (it can not, does not want, does not have the time) to respond to your emails. Indicate in the message body default. For example, "Porfiry Petrovich, if do not come to arrest me before 12:00 Friday, I consider myself to be pardoned." Of course, the period must be real (it is not necessary to send the text of the example on Friday at 11:50). The recipient must be able to physically read and decide for your letter. This "default" relieve you of your responsibility for the non-response of the interlocutor. As always, to the use of this chip should be approached intelligently. If a person is on time and regularly responds to your emails, this ultimatum is it if you do not harm them, a little stretch or lead to a decision not to respond to the letter right now, and make you wait for Friday.
Investments
Letters often with investments: resume, business proposals, cost estimates, drawings, scanned documents - a very handy tool at the same time a source of popular errors.
Mistake: A huge amount of investment. letters come often with attachments up to 20 MB. As a rule, it scans what some documents in TIFF format, with a resolution of 600dpi. The mailer correspondent almost certainly hang for a few minutes in a futile attempt to download a preview of the attachments. And God forbid the recipient try to read this letter on your phone ...
Personally, I immediately delete such messages. Not want your letter appeared in the basket before reading? Check the size of the attachment. It is recommended that it be no more than 3 MB.
What if more than?
- Try setting up your scanner to a different format and resolution. For example, in PDF or 300dpi scans obtained quite readable.
- Think about a program such as WinRar archiver or 7zip. Some files compress very well.
- What if a huge attachment and compress it does not work? For example, almost empty accounting base weighs 900 MB. Come to the aid of information cloud storage: Dropbox, Google Drive, and the like. Some services, such as Mail.ru, automatically convert a huge investment in a reference to cloud storage. But I prefer to manage their own information stored in the cloud, so the automation of Mail.ru not welcome.
And one more recommendation is not quite clear about the investments - their name. It should be understandable and acceptable to the recipient. Once we are in the company prepared an offer to name... let it be Fyodor Dostoevsky. I received a letter from the manager of the project for approval to the CP, and the attachment was a file named "DlyaFedi.docx". With the manager, sent me this, a dialogue similar to the following:
- Dear Manager, you are personally willing to approach this respected man and call him in the face Fedor?
- Once there, respected as a person, it all by my name called.
- Why are you an attachment called "DlyaFedi"? If I now will send to him, do you think he will buy our axes in this manual?
- I'm going to then rename ...
Why cook time bomb - the potential client failure - or create yourself extra work by renaming the file? Why did not immediately name the attachment is correct: "DlyaFodoraMihaylovicha.docx" or even better - "KP_Nebo_Topory.docx".
So, with email as the "face" is more or less sorted out. Let's move on to the e-mail review as a tool of effective work and talk about it distracting component.
Working with letters
E-mail - is a powerful distraction. As with any distraction, the mail must be fought by the tightening of the rules and implementation timetable.
At a minimum, you need to disable all notifications of the arrival of mail. If your mail client is configured by default, you'll be alerted and an audible signal, and blinked icon next to the clock, and will show a preview of the letter. In short, do everything to first tear you away from hard work, and then plunge into the abyss unread emails, and unvisited mailings - minus an hour or two of life.
Someone powerful force of will allows you to not be distracted by the notification, and ordinary people it is better not to tempt fate and disable them. In Mozillla Thunderbird is done through the menu «Tools» → «Settings» → «Basic» → «When new messages."
If there are no notifications, how to understand that it is a letter?
Very simple. You yourself, consciously set aside time to parse email, open the email client and see all unread messages. This can be done twice a day, for example at lunch and in the evening or during downtime, say, in traffic jams.
People often ask how the response time, and urgent letters? The answer is: you do not have urgent letters in the mail. Unless you are working in customer support department (in this section your work schedule by e-mail).
If there are urgent letters, the sender will notify you via other channels - phone, SMS, Skype. Then you consciously go down in the e-mail client and treat urgent email. All the gurus of time management (for example, Gleb Archangel with his "Getting Things Done") declare the standard response by email within 24 hours. This is the normal rule of etiquette - do not wait by the interlocutor instant responses by email. If there is an urgent letter to notify at a fast communication channels.
So, we have disabled the notification to include e-mail client on your schedule.
What to do when we went to the post office and do activities with the title "make out" email? Where is the beginning and the end of this work?
I've heard a lot about the zero inbox system, but unfortunately did not meet a single person to apply it. It was necessary to invent a bicycle. Articles on this topic have to Layfhakere. For example, "zero incoming». Below I will talk about the system of zero inbox in my interpretation. I would be grateful if GTD guru pointed out in the comments, complement or improve the system described.
It is important to understand and accept that e-mail - this is not a task scheduler and archive for your business. Therefore, the folder "Inbox" shall always be empty. If you come for the examination included, do not stop and do not be distracted no matter what, until this empty the folder.
What to do with spam in your inbox? We need to go consecutively for each letter, and remove it. Yes, just select it and click on the keyboard Delete. If you can not bring myself to delete a letter, you have to decide what to do with it.
- You can answer it in three minutes? Do I have to answer it? Yes, we have, and the answer will take no more than three minutes, then respond immediately.
- Meet the need, but the answer preparation takes more than three minutes. If you use a task scheduler, allowing to convert emails into tasks, turn email into a task and forget for a while about it. For example, I use absolutely wonderful service Doit.im. It allows you to create a personal email-address: forwarded to him a letter, and it becomes a problem. But if you do not have the task scheduler, transfer letter to the subfolder "0_Vypolnit".
- After a quick answer to a letter, turning it into a task or a simple examination is necessary decide what to do with this message on: delete or send to a specific folder for a long storage.
Here are some folders for long-term storage is at me.
- 0_Vypolnit. I have a folder does not exist, but if you do not have a scheduler, once again, here you can add letters, requiring detailed study. This folder also needs to be cleaned regularly, but with a thoughtful approach in specially allotted time on it.
- 1_Sprav. Here I put the letter with background information: welcome emails with logins from different web services, tickets for the next flight, and so on.
- 2_Proekty. It contains an archive of correspondence of partners and projects, which have a current relationship. Naturally, for each project or partner wound up a separate folder. The partner folder I fold the letter not only by its employees, but also letters from employees of "Heaven", associated with this partner. It is very convenient: if required, all correspondence on the project at hand in a couple of clicks.
- 3_Muzey. I'm here to shower those letters and remove a pity, and their benefits are obvious. Also here migrate folders with a closed project of "2_Proekty". In short, "Museum" stored first candidates for deletion.
- 4_Dokumenty. There are letters with electronic samples of documents that may be useful in the future for the accounting department, for example, acts of reconciliations from customers tickets for the trip. Folder largely overlaps with folders "2_Proekty" and "1_Sprav", but it holds the accounting information, as in "2_Proekty" folder - management. In "4_Dokumenty" - dead information, and "2_Proekty" - Live.
- 5_Znaniya. Here I put only really useful mailing list to which I want to come back in time for inspiration or search for solutions.
There are other settings in your mail client, important for this system. Firstly, in Thunderbird the default is checked "Mark message read." I prefer to do it consciously, so the box off! To do this, go to the menu «Tools» → «Settings» → «Advanced» → «Reading and display."
Second, the use filters. I used to actively apply filters on sender address automatically forward emails to appropriate folders. For example, letters of the lawyer moved to Folder "Lawyer". I abandoned this approach for several reasons. The first is a letter from a lawyer in 99% of cases related to any project or partner, and therefore subject to the movement in this folder or project partner. Second, I decided to add awareness. You must decide where to store a particular letter, and look for the untreated posts easier to just one place - in your inbox. Now the filter is used only for remote folders regular automatic messages from different systems, that is, the letters that do not require me to make decisions. Filters in Mozilla Thunderbird are configured in the menu «Tools» → «Message Filters".
So, with the right approach to e-mail should go from 10 to 60 minutes a day, depending on the volume of correspondence.
Oh, and one more. You've already disabled the notification of the arrival of new messages? ;)