Email Ettiquette: To CC, BCC or Not at All

I am on a bit of an email rant right now. Email is an incredibly effective communications tool, but it is being bastardized by those who chose to send thoughtless missives to marginally interested recipients.

The beauty of an email is its simple elegance and asynchronous nature.

Send a message, get a quick response.

The downfall with email is its simple elegance. Somehow people have come to see email as a cover your ass CYA tool, a communication megaphone, and a way to lazily stay connected.

I want the emails I receive to be RELEVANT, CONCISE and NECESSARY.

Before you send your next email, truly think about what you are trying to accomplish.

• Are you trying to cover your ass? If so, do you really need to? Does your boss really need to know this stuff? No REALLY?
• Are you spamming a mailing list? Do these people really care? Communicate less often and more concisely and people might actually listen.
• Sending a link to an article? Take the time to write a paragaph describing why and how it is useful to that person.

The less email that you send, the more powerfully it will be received.

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk.

Doug Larson

Think of those words before you send your next email.

Resources:

• http://www.emailreplies.com/
• http://iwillfollow.com/email.htm
• http://www.learnthenet.com/ENGLISH/html/65mailet.htm

Email Fatigue, A Growing Epidemic

I regularly have to remind the board of directors of the local chapter of the Entrepreneur's Organization ( www.eonetwork.org) that our membership and the world at large has "Email Fatigue."

My belief is that:

The telephone or in person meetings should be used to motivate and email should be used solely for informational purposes.

We have in fact implemented a new communications policy for our board, requiring that all board related email be filtered a single email protocol officer. The protocol officer's job is to consolidate all but the most pressing email communications into a single monthly newsletter. We have received rave reviews for this change in policy from our membership and are getting far better response to our communications then in the past.

Email fatigue is a real social and corporate disease that is aggressively spreading and dramatically diminishing the overall health of the email inbox.

Resources:

• http://intranetblog.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/11/20/2512499.html
• http://www.wordspy.com/words/e-mailfatigue.asp
• http://www.eroi.com/resources/article_monday.htm
• http://www.thegsblog.com/?p=185
• http://whitepapers.silicon.com/0,39024759,60096629p-39000608q,00.htm