Personal Away Message Basics

Some think away messages are only for business — not true. You can certainly have away messages for personal contacts so that folks do not think they are being ignored in your absence.

You just have to make sure, if you do use a personal away message, that you take into consideration the following:

• You have to be careful about using an away message on your general e-mail address if your address is easily attainable.  You don’t want to announce you are on vacation leaving your home empty.  Rather state you’ll be away from the computer for awhile without providing details.
• Today I received 3 away message autoresponders when I sent out my Weekly E-mail Etiquette Tips that were stating the recipient would be back on Monday. Yesterday, August 25th.  Right then and there, write yourself a note, post-it or put it in red letters on your calendar by your computer to take down the autoresponder when you get back. Make this one of the first things that you do upon your return.
• Most importantly, if your e-mail address is subscribed to any discussion mailing lists, unsub before your engage your away message. Otherwise, each time a message is sent from the list, your autoresponder will go out to everyone else who gets posts to the list. You may find that you are unsubbed by the list owner and may even have some unpleasant e-mails waiting for you from other list members upon your return.  This is where having a secondary e-mail address to use just for stuff to sub to is a good idea!
• Create a message that is brief, includes your return date and when folks can expect to hear back from you. This way they don’t think they are being ignored.
• Engage your away message right before you leave to go away and do not intend on responding to any further e-mails until you return.
• Upon your return, make it a priority to respond promptly to waiting messages. You don’t want folks wondering if their messages got lost in the shuffle or make them feel they are not important to you.

You may also be interested in:

• When Not to Add to Your Mailing List
• You Are How You Type!
• Jumping to Conclusions in E-mail…
• E-mail Response Expectations are Officially Unrealistic!