Effective Communication Series — Email Etiquette

Dear all, greetings from Arun Rajpurohit, Founder-Director of DLithe(www.dlithe.com)

Covid-19 outbreak has pushed me to work from home. It’s the same for every one around the globe! Recently I travelled to a beautiful place Dharwad, an education & cultural hub. Its monsoon season and i am experiencing such a wonderful rain filled with huge wind and everywhere greenery around me. With a good infrastructure in place, my productivity is increased. I am doing multitasking!

I am starting this blog series on Effective Communication. There are several components in it. I am writing about email etiquette. There is a reason as well to write about it. As I started interacting with students during Online internship, students were asked to submit assignments. They did excellent job in completing the technical work. Some have written wonderful blogs. But then I was surprised to see their emails!

Definitely it is not their mistake as they spend more time on academics and technical subjects. However they do communicate a lot, more of informal way. The email that i received are not that effective. The issues I found when i received assignments from students during Online internship are

1. Email does not have “Subject” mentioned. I.e. Subject line is blank
2. Email does have subject. A hyperlink of their project such as github mentioned, without any email body
3. Email does have subject, body is empty
4. Email does have subject, body, no signature present
5. Email does have subject, body, signature — but the given links are not working!
6. Email has got huge attachment
7. Email body is just one line without head & tail of it!

Email is wonderful mode of communication. Keep it simple and clean, you can achieve great results!

Let us look at the basics. Most of the below is drawn from my experience!

What is Email? — It is mode of written communication that uses electronic media to send the content in the form of text, voice, video messages, documents etc.

Ref: Wiki: Ray Tomlinson is credited as the inventor of email; in 1971, he developed the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts across the ARPANET, using the @ sign to link the user name with a destination server. By the mid-1970s, this was the form recognised as email.

Why Email? — Industry 3.0 , computer & internet era has given an opportunity to connect people remotely, all around the globe. With this, the mode of communication is happening through many software applications. One of such facility is Email. Emails can be written in any language as long as the receiver is able to understand or interpret!

Where Email is used? — In todays world email is used every where as long as you have an email account such as Google, Yahoo, Rediff or any specific domain( ex: i have email account in DLithe), you can use it for sending information

When Email is used? — Email is used to send information in several occasions. For personal use: I want to send pictures of an apartment to my brother. I can send an email with attachments

For official use: I want to communicate with employees. Example, there is a recent change in the organisation policy. I will write email to employees to communicate about new policy

The list goes on.. I am sure you have already experienced any of these by now!

How can you use Email effectively: This is the most important part of this blog. We shall see how to write an effective email

Let us see the structure of email application

New email: Most you will see “Whom to Send”

To: This option can be used to enter recipient email address, to whom you intend to read, take actions based on the email content

CC: Carbon Copy, can be used to enter recipient email address, to whom you want to notify the information. Something like “For Your Information Only” or For Reporting purpose(if needed recipient will also respond to your email)

BCC: Blind Carbon Copy, this option can be used to enter recipient email address, to whom you want to notify. In this case, the recipient that are present in To & CC will not come to know about BCC recipient. Their identity, i.e BCC email address are mostly hidden and don’t appear when you read an email. Generally BCC is used in few occasions.

ex: Let us say, you want to communicate with many people and you have to protect their identity. In this case you can mention all recipients email address in BCC field and send it.

Attn!: Ensure the recipient email address is correct. There are blunders happened such as sending “Hike letter of an employee is sent to a different employee!” “Project report is sent to a manager of different project!”

Next is , Subject Line: This is the field in which you enter a meaningful subject line for recipient to understand your email and take quick actions

ex: Let us say you are sending a project document for review. You can mention subject line as “ Kind Attn! — Project artefact (Design document) for your review”

ex: Let us say you are submitting a internship report / assignment

ex: Assignment submission Internship Report, USN 91DD101 — Python Machine Learning — Batch 1

Do not leave Subject Line as Blank!

Email body: This is very important section to communicate what you intent do. Use the email body to include the subject in detail. Start something like

Dear Mr Arun, Dear Miss Shubha, Dear Sir, Dear Madam, Respected Sir,

You can also something like “Hi Arun, Hi Shubha, Hello! “ etc but mostly if the email is of type informal. Avoid this if its formal

Interestingly many times i experience my name being addressed as “Arjun” instead of Arun!

Then, you can write subject in detail. Let us say it is assignment submission. You can write something like this

Dear Mr Arun,

I am student of asdf institution submitting the assignment work completed as part of internship program.

Below is the link to my project: https://github.com/avrgit/Python-Machine-Learning/blob/master/README.md

Below is the link to my blog: https:medium.com/projectreport1

I request you to review and provide your comments if any.

Thank You.

I had done mistake once! I wrote the sentence like — “Ass we have a client meeting at 2:00pm, we are postponing the one on one meeting with Ms xyg”

Immediately I got call from HR as she had noticed the mistake, the word “Ass” was mentioned! So , kindly ensure such things don’t happen with you!

Kindly avoid ‘CHAT” type of words such “U can review” “gr8 to see u r mail” etc.. this is just sample i mentioned.

Finally, put digital signature. It helps recipient to contact you incase there is no response to get clarification further

Your signature can be something like this

Regards,

Avanish Panjit

Student of 3rd year,

Department of Compuer Science Engineering

ASDF College of Engineering

Benagluru — 80

Contact: +91 12345 67890

email: avshp@email.com

So in summary it look like below

Important things to note:

1. Ensure recipient email address is correctly entered
2. Subject line is proper
3. Email body is having correct details. Check for spelling mistakes
4. Mention your signature
5. Avoid attachments that are large size. They consume lot of space. Avoid this. Instead palce them in cloud and mention the link in the email body
6. While “Replying to an email” OR Forwarding to an email, don’t change the subject line. This will help to search, follow the previous email threads. Even during replying, all the above mentioned applies. Do follow them without fail

There are many things you need to consider like when forwarding an email, double check if its necessary to do so! If you do so also, ensure it reaches to intended people. Otherwise its just get unnoticed several times.

Final Remarks: Email is very good facility to communicate with other people. It is wonderful tool used for multiple purpose. Not just for communication, but in digital world it is used for marketing , email campaigns etc. Use it for effective communication. You can achieve good results!

All the best

Be Agile.. Be In Demand

Regards

Arun Rajpurohit