Advocacy Services - Strategy - Sending Effective Email

Ten Helpful Hints

Summary This document provides some helpful hints on how to use email efficiently and effectively.

Email makes sense for today's fast-paced world where information is more powerful if it is instantaneous and actions are stronger if they are targeted and quickly disseminated. Using the Internet, grassroots activists can electrify their information and actions. Email is also reliable and is quickly delivered (usually within seconds or minutes). You can also subscribe to electronic mailing lists on the Internet and have documents about certain topics automatically sent to your e-mail address.

Why Is Email Different?
Electronic communication, because of its speed and broadcasting ability, is fundamentally different from paper-based communication. Because the turnaround time can be so fast, email is more conversational than traditional paper communications, and your recipient can ask questions immediately.

Because of its unique nature, there are several guidelines you should follow to make your email messages as efficient and effective as possible.

1. Be concise. As with all email communications, the best messages are those that are concise and to-the-point. The goal of email is to improve communication effectiveness and efficiency. Before you send a message, ask yourself: Have I said what I want to say in the most effective way? Will the recipient find this information valuable? Another good rule is to try to keep everything on one "page". In most cases, this means twenty-five lines of text.
   
2. Use descriptive "headers." The subject header of your email message (called the "header") should provide the reader with a clear indication about what the message contains. A subject line that pertains clearly to the email body is a good way to get people in the right context to receive your message. It should be brief (as many mailers will truncate long subject lines), does not need to be a complete sentence, and should pertain to the subject.
   
3. Use shorter paragraphs. Frequently the email will be read in a document window with scrollbars. While scrollbars are nice, it makes it harder to visually track long paragraphs. Consider breaking up your paragraphs to only a few sentences apiece.
   
4. Line length. A good rule of thumb is to keep your lines under seventy-five characters long. (You should leave a little room for the indentation or quote marks your correspondent might want if he/she is going to quote a piece of your email in his/her reply.)
   
5. Use discretion when quoting documents. If you are replying to previous email, you should explicitly quote that document to provide context. Be cautious about quoting, however. Only quote lines in the email that are relevant to your response.
   
6. Be polite and respectful. In all your emails, remember that even though you are communicating via computer, there are people on the receiving end of your message. Unlike speech, it is very difficult to convey the specific tone of your message using email. Because of the lack of vocal inflection, gestures, and shared environment, email is not as rich a communication method as a face-to-face or telephone conversation.
   
7. Be swift. You must be quick to communicate effectively. Fortunately it's easy to respond quickly to email. There's almost always a reply option in your email program that takes care of all of the addressing for you. Try to make it a rule to answer your email as soon as you get it. If you don't have the full answer right then, let the other person know that you'll be getting back to them.
   
8. Proofread Or spell-check before you send. You'll quickly notice that spelling is often lax in cyberspace. That's because many emails are informal, personal documents. That's fine, but think of how embarrassed you'll be when typos turn up in your press release, action alert, or grant proposal. It's a good idea to get in the habit of proofreading or spell-checking all of your outgoing email.
   
9. Continue to network by other means. Again, email is only one communication tool available to you; it is by no means a substitute for most of the communication you need to do to be effective in your work. Many people find that regular email communication with a small group of people actually leads to greater personal interaction (in-person, by phone, etc.), and you should encourage this.
   
10. Other email etiquette tips:

• If you receive a message that seems out of character for the sender, double-check before taking it seriously. If you ever receive a message that makes you angry, do not under any circumstances respond immediately! Wait awhile to cool off, and if possible, meet and talk face-to-face.
• Email can be misdirected, even when you are careful. Do not put something in an email message that you would not want read by everybody. And if you get someone else's message, let the sender know.
• Email is easily forwarded to someone else. Although this is convenient, it is not always appropriate. If you are unsure, ask the sender before forwarding the message.

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