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You Are Bold When You Bold Your E-mail

No doubt about it if you make the extra effort to bold select text in e-mail you are being bold! Don’t underestimate how bolding certain words or sentences can make an otherwise benign statement one with emphasis. To bold only certain terms or phrases certainly makes a point of making a point.

Then, if you turn that bolded word to red text – Yikes! Make things worse and add multiple !!! or ??? and you are clearly upset. And plan on the person on the other side to perceive that emphasis X10 your intent!

Be very sure that is the tone you want to relay before hitting Send. To say after the fact that you “didn’t mean it that way” simply implies you are unable to stand behind your comments and what you did in fact mean to say when you composed that e-mail. Otherwise why did you bold those specific words — why did you change them to red?
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No E-mail Etiquette Training?

I read a recent study that reflected over 50% of businesses still do not offer any sort of E-mail Etiquette Training! No wonder so many employees, customer service reps and business owners themselves seem to not realize the importance of proper practices.

At the same time, we as consumers need to brush up on these issue so that we are good customers and can communicate with courtesy and clarity. This makes everyones job easier!

In business, on or off-line, impressions are everything. Think about it… off-line you notice what people wear, how they present themselves, the quality or lack there of in regard to their business cards.

The very same applies online. As an example, if you e-mail in one liners, do not spell check, do not use proper sentence structure or lack basic grammar, how do you think that reflects on you and your business? Not good. On the other hand, what type of customer do you look like if you e-mail as though you can’t put a well structured sentence together?
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E-mail Tip: Avoid Spammy Subject: Fields

Based on this week’s legit e-mail that ended up in my Junk/Trash box, I thought it would be a good idea to offer you these Subject: field tips to help avoid looking spammy.

ISP and networks across the Internet have spam filters and flags that look for certain criteria in an e-mail to give it a “spam score”. Do a bunch of things that are standard and customary in spam e-mails and you do risk your e-mails getting blocked or landing in the trash of the person you are trying to e-mail.

What is in your Subject: field can make a difference as to your perceived “spamminess”. Here are some easy Subject: field tips to keep in mind:
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E-mail Response Time Matters!

What is the rule for how fast you should be responding to e-mails?

The short answer: As soon as you can.

The long answer: It is obvious that some e-mails will be more important to you than others. It also is clear that we only have so much time in a day and there will be days where you will be unable to reply to any e-mails at all. So, you do the best you can to reply to everyone as soon as you can.

Onliners look at e-mail as an instantaneous medium. They know that their e-mail is in your inbox waiting to be downloaded or ready for you to read usually within minutes to hours of clicking Send.
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What is an E-mail Whitelist?

With all the spam and junk mail making its way into our inboxes, ISPs and software companies have come up with lists of criteria, formats, red flags. IPs and addresses commonly used by spammers that then cause those addresses to be automatically blocked.

Your “whitelist” is the list of e-mail contacts you want to receive e-mail from. Your whitelist can also be known as your “Approved Senders List”. Many times your whitelist is in the background and addresses get added automatically when you add new contacts to your address book. By adding addresses to your whitelist, approved senders list or address book, you are clearing the way for those addresses to hopefully not get blocked.

Hopefully? Well, is senders spam and get blacklisted or do spammy things, their e-mail may still get block. It’s not a perfect world.
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