We receive 100’s of emails daily from clients and colleagues around the world, and as we’re a global business these emails rarely stop. Luckily we practice Zero Inbox techniques that mean we’re able to handle this volume of email. However, when you’re dealing with such a large volume of email there are some emails that often get left until the end of the day or even the week to process. These are those badly worded, overcomplicated emails. The folks you email may not be as awesome at managing their emails as we are, and maybe your email never gets responded to. So here is a random list we’ve curated on the most common email howlers, and how to avoid them.

Too much information

Some emails just suck the life out of you. These are the Blue Whales of the email world. Make sure you keep your emails as short as possible, nobody has time to waste reading a 2 screen email message. If you need to provide some detailed background include a document, but make sure the main points and your expectation are in the email. Short emails are our #2 top tip for 2019.

Request for action

Following on from the above point, make sure you’re super clear about that your asked of your reader. We recommend including the “ASK” in the opening sentence of the email, this way your reader will be able to review your email with their response in mind, instead of getting to the end of the email and finding that it was just FYI.

Subject lines

A great way to communicate your request is via the subject line of the email. But we see too many generic email subjects such as “Intro”, or “Meeting”. The one that really worries us is the “Fw: Fw: FW: FW:” subject line. This poor little bastard of an email has been passed around without anyone taking responsibility and now it’s on your desktop.

Rude emails

We covered this in detail last week, but sometimes in order to make our emails come across as important, we often use rude or assumptive language. It’s not necessary, and if you need to make so someone fully understands the importance or urgency of something maybe look at alternative methods of communication, such as a quick phone or video call. Often a face to face conversation can get across so much more than an overly aggressive email.