Allowing for Personal Choice -- HTML or Text E-Mail

When you ask readers whether they want your e-mail newsletter in HTML or text e-mail, be sure to honor their preference.

Allen, Cliff. Allen.com (2001). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Are You Drowning in E-Mail?

We can't halt the flow of incoming email messages, but we can give you some suggestions that will help you become a better email communicator.

Blicq, Ronald S. TC-FORUM (1999). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Are You Guilty of Sloppy E-mails? It Can Cost You

Some of the nicest people we know send the most thoughtless e-mails. Many are telegraphic, with a smattering of disconnected words and abbreviations, leaving the reader to fill in the blanks. Most are dashed off without review and arrive in their native state: confusing, grammarless and brimful of spelling errors. That's not even to mention lack of logic and transitions.

Canavor, Natalie and Claire Meirowitz. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Automated Email From Websites to Customers

Transactional email can be a website's customer service ambassador, but messages must first survive a ruthless selection process in the user's in-box. Differentiating your message from spam is thus the first duty of email design.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Avoid the Use of Familiar Phrases and Messages in Your Emails

Sometimes copywriters and content writers write in clichés. To a reader, the line has barely any meaning, and certainly no impact. Why not? Because it is too familiar. Because he or she has read the same phrase so many times before, in too many other places.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

A Beginner's Guide to Effective Email

In a conversation, there is some minimum of shared context. You might be in the same physical location, and even on the phone you have, at minimum, commonality of time. When you generate a document for paper, usually there is some context embedded in the medium: the text is in the proceedings of a conference, written on a birthday card, handed to your professor with a batch of Econ 101 term papers, or something similar. With email, you can't assume anything about a sender's location, time, frame of mind, profession, interests, or future value to you. This means, among other things, that you need to be very, very careful about giving your receivers some context. This section will give specific strategies for doing so.

Sherwood, Kaitlin Duck. Webfoot.com (1998). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Communicating across Cultures by E-mail: Advice for Consultants  

E-mail styles and preferences can vary from country to country, presenting a possible challenge to effective communication. Read on for how to add a personal touch to your messages so that e-mail becomes an asset to your business.

Lash, Becky. Intercom (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

E-Mail is Dead

What did the kids say? Email is dead. It's hanging on as a mode of communication for adults (that's us) and within businesses. Kids will even use it to communicate with adults. But for the majority of kids, email has been replaced by two things: text messaging and social networks.

Lentz, Michelle. Write Technology (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

E-tiquette: Rules of the Road  

Hay-Roe presents nine rules for writing clear, concise e-mail messages.

Hay-Roe, Hugh. Intercom (2001). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Every Email You Send is a Customer Service Email

If you do business online, there are times when you send your customers, prospects and subscribers an email or two. The emails you send tend to fall within one of three categories. Each of these three types of emails requires a slightly different approach. Their purposes are different, and each should be optimized to perform their respective tasks.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

A Generational Approach To Using Emoticons As Nonverbal Communication    

The purpose of this article is to help determine whether the use of emoticons in computer mediated communication (CMC) are truly nonverbal cues. A review of the literature revealed that the traditional nonverbal theorists failed to predict the future employment of nonverbal cues in electronic CMC. A variety of emoticons are then described including the traditional happy face 3 and sad face 3, numerous variations of faces employing keyboard keys, a number of abbreviations commonly in use, and FLAMING. Inasmuch as emoticons are presently in widespread though informal use, the problem of how and what business communication instructors should teach about emoticons is discussed. The conclusion reached is that of a generational recipient determinism. It is recommended that recipients who are Traditionalists (born before 1946) should not be sent e-mail with emoticons; those who are Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) probably should not be sent e-mail with emoticons; those who are Generation Xers (those born between 1964 and 1980) may be sent e-mail with some of the more common emoticons; and those who are termed Millenials (born after 1980 and coming of age after 2000) may be sent e-mail with generous use of emoticons.

Krohn, Franklin B. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

How to Write an Email

How do you write an effective email that your recipient finds clear and easy to understand? There's more to it than just typing a few words and clicking the Send button. These notes give you some guidelines on the following: technical issues, document structure, the importance of knowing your audience, language issues and layout and visual design.

TechScribe (2002). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

HTML Emails: Taming the Beast

Should you use CSS or (horror of horrors) tables? And what do you do when images are ‘blocked’?

Greiner, David. Vitamin (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Hyperlinks in Email

Email usability can be dramatically increased or decreased by how URLs are designed and placed in messages. An example of one problem is described in detail in this article. Also, a couple of simple tips are provided to help you improve the URLs in your email messages.

Rhodes, John S. WebWord (2002). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Is E-Mail Still Effective?

With recent press surrounding the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act and possible future charges for sending e-mail as well as virus creators competing with each other for infection rates, how can you ensure that your e-mail communications are still effective and reach their intended recipients? E-mail has qualities that make it an ideal communication vehicle. But for all of these positive characteristics, e-mail has taken a serious blow over the past six years. An anti-spam technology company estimated that 62 percent of all e-mail sent across the Internet was identified as some sort of spam by users of their technology.

Hoy, Richard. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Is Spam Ordinary Commercial Speech?

An informal poll within the U.S. indicates that more than half of respondents favor a law restricting "spam," that is, unwanted electronic advertising that everyone with an e-mail address has been exposed to but does not know how to stop. In the poll, 30 percent favor making false e-mail headers illegal, but only slightly more than 11 percent said spam restrictions would violate the First Amendment.

Morris, Stan. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Is Your E-Mail Getting Through?

Ever had an e-mail message go missing in cyberspace? With about half the e-mail messages sent daily being spam, it's no wonder that Internet Service Providers are installing spam blocking software. But are your legitimate messages being blocked too? Find out how to avoid triggering spam alerts with your everyday mail.

Bennaco (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

A Marketplace for Attention: Responses to a Synthetic Currency Used to Signal Information Importance in E-Mail  

The productivity of information workers is jeopardized by too much e–mail. A proposed solution to e–mail overload is the creation of an economy that uses a scarce synthetic currency that senders can use to signal the importance of information and receivers can use to prioritize messages. A test of the virtual economy with corporate information workers showed that people in a large company used different amounts of the currency when sending e–mail messages, and that the amount of currency attached to messages produced statistically significant differences in how quickly receivers opened the messages. An analysis of the network of virtual currency trades between workers showed the different roles that participants played in the communication network, and showed that relationships defined by currency exchanges uncovered social networks that are not apparent in analyses that only examine the frequency, as opposed to the value of interactions.

Reeves, Byron, Simon Roy, Brian Gorman and Teresa Morley. First Monday (2008). Articles>Communication>Correspondence>Email

Protecting the User's Mailbox

Email is a powerful way to reach customers, but overdoing it is risky. Let users know up front that you'll respect their mailboxes. Otherwise, they won't give their email addresses, and you'll lose a unique channel for marketing and customer service.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

A Theoretical Approach to Using Electronic Mail or Why Doesn't Anyone Respond to My E-Mail  

The features of time, place, speaker, and audience define the situational context of any communication--face-to-face, paper-based, or electronic. However, they are significantly altered in electronic communication. If participants in electronic communications do not recognize how these features are altered they may not be able to use their electronic mail effectively.

Goubil-Gambrell, Patricia and Rockie Beaman. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Using E-mail To Make Your Pitch

Gone are the days when you called a reporter, mailed a letter or sent a fax and expected to get a callback. These days, more reporters than ever are relying on e-mail to review news pitches or story ideas. Pitching by e-mail is sometimes more difficult than sending a pitch letter by standard mail or calling a reporter on the telephone, because with more and more e-mail being sent these days, yours needs to stand out from the rest. Here are tips on how to make your pitch stand out in the maze of e-mail communications that reporters, and other media contacts, receive each day.

Lee, Terry and Rich Brant. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Where is Email 2.0? And Why is Commercial Email So Boring?

I don't recall the last time I received a commercial email that made me take notice or smile.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Why "Best Buddy" Emails Work So Well. Sometimes.

The best buddy approach works within specific product and service sectors, where readers can easily be tripped into a state of dissociation...because they have problems that the writer promises to solve.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Writing Effective E-Mail: Top 10 Tips

The informal e-mails you exchange with your friends don't have to meet any particular standards, but if you want to be taken seriously by professionals, you should learn proper e-mail etiquette.

Bauer, Jessica and Dennis G. Jerz. Seton Hill University (2000). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email