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Let’s face it, reading and responding to email has become an impossibly inefficient and downright annoying task for many business professionals these days. Add in all the text messages floating around and we all need a better plan. With this in mind, here are two email communication rules we have adopted at Shamrock Financial:
Good Subject Lines Save Lives: Well, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but in the life of deleted or achieved email the subject line becomes the best means by which to dispatch an email search and rescue team. Pointed, specific subject lines help the reader prioritize your message and make it easy for them to locate the message later on.
Secondly, make your subject line relevant to the reader, not to you. Help the reader determine if it requires immediate attention or not. Be an email friend not an email foe. For example: if you want to meet on Thursday morning, a subject line of Thursday does little to get at the real subject; instead you might write Meeting on new HR guides. Says what you really want and is a lot easier to search. Common sense goes a long way here. Help the reader, not yourself.
Don’t Be A CC Line Enabler: Give little or no attention to the baby screaming in the back of the plane. It’s not yours anyway. The CC email is just the sender’s way of play CYE and later being able to say “Hey, you were CC’ed”. It’s a terrible way to show respect for someone’s time and attention. Don’t violate and don’t participate. Instead, create a Saved folder for all messages you were CC’ed on and read them once a week – twice a week if you’re like 100th in line to the throne at your company or in your family.
When producing email yourself ask why the CC person is not worthy of the To line. If you don’t have a good answer then put them on the top line or remove them entirely. I recommend creating an Out of Office message that informs people that you are now playing Subject Line Police and will only be responding to CC’ed messages “once a year”. You can remove the auto-reply after a week or so. They’ll get the message.
Remember, email safety is everyone’s job.
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I have been working in the consumer finance field since 1984 and was fortunate enough to be an original founder of Shamrock Financial. Today I’m the company’s Chief Executive Officer, which is a nice way of saying “I got here first.” My career is energized by Educating & Motivating my referral partners, staff, family and friends. I love what I do.
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