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E-mail Tip #3 - Less is More in E-mails

Guest post by: Robert Whipple

Article Overview: Most leaders communicate more through e-mail than face to face with their people. Many managers feel the use of e-mail is a license to dump out huge quantities of information expecting the workers to absorb and follow all instructions cleverly hidden in volumes of text. Too bad: it does not work that way.

E-mail Tip #3 - Less is More in E-mails

Long e-mails simply do not get read carefully most of the time. They are skimmed at best. As you are reading this article, you can picture a person you know that has a bad habit of sending very long e-mails. Often these are formatted with long unbroken text that is extremely hard to decode. When you see a note from this person pop into your in box, what goes through your mind? If you are like me you are saying, "Oh great, another tomb from Paul, I will open this tonight when I am trying to get to sleep anyway."

The other person thinks he is communicating, but really he is only annoying. The crime is that there was probably some good information in the e-mail, but you did not absorb it because the effort was too great.

There are some ground rules that can mitigate these problems.

1. Try to word your e-mail so it can be read in 30 seconds or less. Occasionally you will have to go over that, but start out with this bogy in mind.

2. Try to have the note not go "over the horizon." When a note is longer than the preview frame, people do not know how long the note is as they wade into it. That puts the reader in a stressed posture where proper interpretation is more difficult.

3. Use bullets if there are three or more main points. These are much easier for the reader to absorb. Note I an using that technique in this article rather than having a long complex paragraph.

4. Use attachments for instructions or communications that go over a page. Let the e-mail be a kind of summary page for the total content in the attachment.

5. If there is action required because of the e-mail, be sure to specify who is to do what by when. Vague intentions or instructions will not result in compliance.

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Article Tags: compact, email, leadership, manager, short



Related Forum Posts
Re: Awesome Resource: Instapaper - So far the only thing I use the filters for is to send all the safelist emails I get to a folder. It currently has over 386,000 emails in it. This is a really good tip though. I need to start utilizing it. Emails eat up too much of my time right now.
Web magazine publisher - My duties 1) Research the articles that goes into each of my webzines - science fiction in all media, various sports (Yay, Lady Vols, 8th championship in 2008, by the way!) 2) Write the articles 3) Format and upload them to the web 4) Email and network various contacts to get out the word that new articles are available. 5) Email authors, actors, etc. etc. to see if they want to do interviews. 6) Advertise for more contributors - and then edit and upload their material!
Re: Awesome Resource: Instapaper - [quote="billgelwick":3jk3d6mn]This is a really good tip though. I need to start utilizing it. Emails eat up too much of my time right now.[/quote:3jk3d6mn] It's probably the biggest single productivity issue for most entrepreneurs!
Re: Email Marketing - Yes, true. What kind of changes happened in Email campaigns except the opt-in? Finding the exact target and reaching them is always a challenge. What new methods can we have to reach the new customers? Thanks Robert
Re: Email marketing - Email marketing is one area I have never taken serious! The personal experience of SPAM really make me de taste that marketing medium. Any positive application model, drop in the comment?


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