Thursday, January 15, 2015YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Emails are easy enough to write and send quickly, perhaps too easy and too quickly, especially in business.
That’s because emails often reflect the writer’s absence of deliberate thought that he would give messages communicated on paper, finds a survey of 1,000 working adults conducted by MailTime.com.
The “Top 5 Business Email Mistakes” as compiled by MailTime are emails that are too long, “insensitive in tone,” not personally addressed to the recipient(s), addressed to too many recipients, and include too many replies.
Its findings are confirmed by Christina Saenger, an assistant professor of marketing at Youngstown State University, and Nicholas Volinchak, assistant manager for quality control at Sage Data Service LLC in the Youngstown Business Incubator.
Saenger, who began teaching at YSU the fall semester, taught an undergraduate class on the use of social media in marketing.
An all-too-common mistake in writing an email is not keeping the text clear and concise, Saenger says. She advises writing in short blocks. “Using short blocks of text can make the body of the email easier to read and comprehend,” she says. “Emails shouldn’t be overloaded with information and should be kept short.”
The MailTime survey found that nearly one in five in its sample won’t read an email longer than one paragraph, more than half stop at the end of the second, three in four quit at the end of the third paragraph and more than five in six won’t ready beyond the fourth. Only one in 10 will read an email in full when it goes beyond seven paragraphs.
Not only do poorly composed emails fail to grab the recipients’ attention, Saenger says, the writer usually neglects the subject line, the first thing the recipient notices. “The good marketer needs to capture the audience’s attention quickly,” Saenger says, “by using an appealing and descriptive subject line. Then he keeps that attention by what he writes in the first few lines of the email. … Don’t try to trick the audience into opening the email. It does much more harm than good.”
Hastily written mails tend to be “insensitive” in tone, an overwhelming 93% of the MailTime sample complained. Brevity does not mean curtness and abruptness, Volinchak emphasizes. Politeness and civility are just as important as brevity.
“Tone is an important as content,” Volinchak says, “for lasting business relationships. The Golden Rule is effective, even when writing to a difficult client. Avoid a potential confrontation or ill feelings that your email might create,” he advises, “and you’ll foster a better working relationship.”
Saenger advises having someone else “within the organization review the message before it’s sent … to lessen the possibility that an insensitive email will go out.”
What the writer thinks is a conversational tone – and would be in a face-to-face meeting – can be interpreted as impolite or disrespectful in an email, Volinchak cautions.
Moreover, the writer should avoid emojis and emoticons. They come off as cutesy and unprofessional, reflecting poorly on the writer and his company. “Don’t use emojis,” he advises. “You are a professional. Act like one.”
In their haste to dash off and send emails, too many writers neglect to review or proof what they wrote. Before hitting the send button, review your message for spelling and grammatical errors, Volinchak says.
The challenge becomes: How does the writer grab recipients’ attention and keep it? Saenger offers these tips:
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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