How many of us have sent an email with a document attached, or so we thought, only to have the recipient write back and say, “There was no attachment.” I know I have. And I don’t like the way it makes me feel or the way it makes me look as a professional.
With so much business being conducted over email, how you communicate in this medium is a direct reflection on your professionalism. So, just like how you spend time to perfect a presentation or proposal, you also need to take time with your emails.
To minimize error and maximize the professional impact of your emails, I offer the following five suggestions:
1. Compose your email, read it over, and run a spell check on it. Make sure you have covered the points you want to convey, and that punctuation and spelling are correct.
2. If you are sending an attachment, attach it, then open it to double check that it is the right attachment and that it is also error-free.
3. If you’re doing a cut-and-paste from one email to another, make sure that names and specific content points have been customized to the new recipient.
4. Fill in the subject line. Make it short, to the point, and relevant to the content in the email. Don’t go for catchy. Go for professional.
5. FINALLY, and only after you have composed, checked, attached, and subject lined your email do you fill in the recipient’s address. And yes, you double check this, too. We all know more than one Lisa, right? Make sure you’re sending it to the right one.