Personal Development 101 – Getting Rid of Bad Email Habits

Because I know that personal development plans are important to you achieving your much coveted personal development success, I decided to start a personal development series. This would be the first installment so you better watch out for the next one.

Today, I want to talk about how what email habits can be annoying to readers so you can start getting rid of them.

A prominent personal development coaching firm has conducted a quick study on what mostly annoys email recipients and here is what they commonly say:

1.  Email signatures significantly affects the context of the message. Some people would think you do not know how to change your settings when they see “Sent from my iPhone/BB” on the signature line. Others would feel that they’re less important because they’re only worth a quick note via their mobile phones.

You can however turn the situation upside down by being creative. Try thinking of other ways to say that you are typing from the comforts of your mobile device. Try to use some play of words.

2. Automatic responses are good and are more often than not understandable but never include the phrase “I am busy right now. I will get back to you as soon as possible.” I mean, business people know that everybody who’s seriously working are seriously busy so there is no need to state the obvious.

You can stick with acknowledging that you have received your email and that a more detailed reply will be sent soon.

3. “Thanks” and “Cheers” can be annoying at times. Well, some people believe that nothing beats a simple “Thank you” as this is believed to be the best way to express sincere gratitude. Also, some people think that “Cheers” is very British-sounding. Remember, you have to make sure that no matter how little time you have in answering your emails, you have to make each message sound like the person you are replying to are pretty much important to you.

4. Mispelled words and poorly constructed sentences are not only irritating, they also give your readers the impression that you weren’t really putting your mind into replying to them.

5. Too many recipients of a single email that you have written to sound like it was a personal message can be a major turn-off. For those who do not know yet, BCC means blind carbon copy and you can use this to send one message to multiple recipients without them knowing that they all got the same email.

But of course, there are no hard-and-fast rules in emailing and I cannot blame you if you would disagree with some items written above. Remember, however, that this is based on a survey so before you throw a fit, think again.