Effective and Ineffective Email Practices

There are many ways to write an email, whether that be in an office setting, or in a school setting. Sometimes though, we find that people do not have the most effective skills in writing an email.

Effective email examples:

1. A distributor is emailing you to let you know that they will be in town and would like to meet up with you in the office. Their email is very clear and to the point, from their subject line do the first sentence of their email. They also do not spend a lot of time going over what they want to meet about, just giving you a time that they will be in town and hoping that you would be willing to meet with them. This is effective because you are not reading through the whole email trying to figure out where and when.
2. Your boss sends out an email to reiterate their expectations set for the company. Without even looking at the email and only the subject line, you know that this is an important email by and should be read immediately. When reading the email they are very clear on their dissatisfaction with the lack of meeting expectations, but they are polite about it, not putting anyone down. They also attach copies of the expectations to clear up any confusion among anyone so that there are no more questions. This is a quick and simple effective email that is being professional.

Ineffective email examples:

1. An email was written to a distributor warehouse about the dissatisfaction over product that was sent. In the email it was very brute and to the point in a way that would hold a negative light about you to this company. A good thing to remember is that the person on the other end of the email or the phone is not always the person that has made the mistake, just the one cleaning up the mess. There was also no goodwill at the end of the email. These are not ways one would want to come across to another company, whether they work with them or for them.
2. The boss has emailed out their expectations for the day of keeping up with the store. In their subject line it is not very clear about what expectations they are talking about, and in the email itself they are not clear as well. They are pointing out expectations for one department, and it is not even something that department takes care of. This causes plenty of confusion and frustration among the employees.
3. Upper management send out an email congratulating one store on their accomplishments over a holiday. While it is great to share with other stores their good work, the email is putting down other stores by making statements that they are the best in the district, and that nobody else did any of the same work. This gives a negative impact on the other stores who did amazing work as well, but the circumstances were not the same. Not every store is built the same, and some have a better layout for a better chance to do better. Putting those stores without the layout down because of something they cannot control is not effective for pushing them into the right direction.