7 Deadly Email Sins

This is a follow-up post to the “Seven Deadly Twitter Sins,” “Seven Deadly Facebook Sins” and Seven Deadly Linkedin Sins posts.

Everybody sends and receives tons of emails every single day. There are some basic email etiquette rules that people need to follow. Here are seven things to avoid doing when sending an email.
(*For all intensive purposes, this is for business related emails only).

7. No Subject Line
There’s a subject line for a reason. It lets people know what the email will be about. It helps people prioritize and sort through their hundreds of emails faster. Please do us all a favor and fill in the subject line honestly.

6. Hitting The “Reply All” Button Instead Of “Reply”
I’m not talking about hitting the reply all button on accident. I’m talking about the people, who use the “Reply All” button religiously as a way to “Cover Your Ass.” Not only does this not work, but it also annoys every single person who gets spammed by your emails.

5. The Detail King/Queen
Emails are supposed to be concise and to the point. I really don’t want to read a three page email that could be answered in three sentences. Keep it short.

4.  Sending A Business Email From An Inappropriate Email Address
This one really should be a no-brainer. But yet, there are still business and/or job search emails sent from email addresses like sexylexy82@hotmail.com. There are so many free email providers out there. How hard is it to have one professional email account with some variation of your name and/or company name.

3. The Overzealous “Out-Of-Office” Replier
This is a personal pet peeve. Out-of-office emails should be used sparingly. There is no logical reason why you should have an out-of-office reply if you are only away for an afternoon.

2. Forwarding “Chain Letter Emails” And Spam Mail
When I was about 9 and  logged into a dial-up AOL account, I would get lots of chain letters, and guess what I deleted all of them. I still delete and mark each chain letter as spam today. The same goes for the “online Viagra” spam emails. Please keep those to yourself and/or mark them as “spam.” K, Thanks.

1. Sending Emails With Typos
How hard is it to take an extra minute to proofread an email? I have actually received an email where a business contact accidently left out the “o” in hello. Yeah, quite a different meaning. That typo may be amusing, but having typos in emails is unprofessional. If you can’t take the time to proofread an email, why should your boss trust you to handle a big project? Bottom line: Show pride in your work.