Well, Ed was feeling great about life these days and great about his email. Lately, his visits from the Email Angel had been about writing better emails rather than about email management. As Ed began to write better emails he found that he was getting better emails in return. So what had Ed learned about writing better emails?
Never use email for negative communication. Ed found that correcting someone or anything else negative just didn't work well in Emails. It led to hurt feelings and people tended to read those emails again and again and even pass them along to others. He learned to pick up the phone or schedule a meeting for touchy subjects.
Create better subject lines. Ed's goal was to create a subject line that would allow the recipient to easily prioritize messages from him without ever opening them. A good subject line to him included three things: the purpose of the message, the action requested, and when he wanted a response. For example, "Need Your Input on Survey (Please respond by 10/5)".
Include multiple options. Sometimes it seemed like scheduling a meeting with someone could take a dozen messages. Ed would suggest a time and then they would email back. He couldn't do it then, so he would suggest a time and so on. So what Ed started doing was including multiple options in the first email. Something like, "Would Tuesday at 10, Wednesday at 2:30, or Thursday for lunch be better for you?"
Use templates for common responses. For common responses Ed developed some templates where he could just fill in the blanks and send the message. These worked great.
Things had changed so much for Ed. He had been thinking about quitting his job but instead had gotten a promotion. They were now calling him "Ed the Email Guy". Ed had escaped from email hell and moved into email heaven.
For other chapters in the book click, The Book .
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