Email Netiquette For Small Business

Communicating on the net is just like other forms of communication. There are rules that govern polite behaviour. If you slip up and unwittingly breach one of the rules, you instantly brand yourself (and your business) as gauche, lacking business sense and generally not someone to do business with.

Here are the top ten netiquette rules to help you present a professional email appearance.

1.Subject Lines- Watch Your Words

The subject line of your email is the headline for the content. The worst breach of netiquette is to leave the subject line blank, closely followed by misspelling the words in the subject line.

People scan the subject lines to see if they should open the email. Make sure your subject is interesting, personal (include the person's first name in it if possible) and does not include the words "free, special offer, earn $, 50% off, double your income" and a whole host of other spam trigger words.

If you include the wrong words in your subject line you can expect your email to get caught in the spam filter.

2.Addresses Are Important

The netiquette rule here is if you have more than one address, then put all the addresses into the BCC (which stands for Blind Carbon Copy) field of your email. NEVER put a long list into the To or cc fields.

The reason is if one person on your list has a virus on their computer, then the computer picks up the addresses of everyone on the email and blasts the virus out to all of their computers (not a great way to win business!).

The other thing that happens is the address lists can end up in the hand of spammers who sell the lists to other spammers, and you end up with thousands of offers for Viagra in your in-box.

3.Watch How You Forward Emails

If you receive an email and you want to forward it on to other people the polite way to do this is to delete all of the names and addresses of people who received the email before you.

You also should remove the letters "FW" in the subject line.

Another netiquette essential is to only forward the email from the page you are reading (and not the email you receive). The reason being that if the email has done the rounds and people haven't deleted all the previous addresses, you are sending an email that takes about 9 pages to click through to get to the page you want to read.

4.Hidden Spam

Spam comes in many forms. The petition emails encouraging people to save whales or stop putting refugees in detention centres are a form of spam. What happens is people who genuinely believe in the issue put their name and email address on the list and then forward it on to their friends (as requested). The problem is professional spammers end up with the list of valid names and addresses and use the list to generate more spam to your in-box.

Netiquette is to never forward petitions via email.

5.Chain Letters – Still Travelling After All These Years

If ever you get an email asking you to send it on you will get good/bad luck, then this is a chain letter. They were banned in the traditional postal system decades ago. Just hit delete and don't be tempted to send them on. If you really find the content essential to forward, then delete the bad luck/good luck bit and keep the humourous sections.

In a business setting, chain letters should never be forwarded.

6.Warnings – Not All They Are Cracked Up To Be

Many businesses read about warnings over potential computer viruses, new ways to stop women being attacked or emails suggesting if you click here money will be magically donated to charity.

99.9% of all of these emails are urban myths. Check out www.hoax-slayer.com before you send on any warnings.

7.Flaming Emails

We've all done it or heard about it – somebody who was really ticked off and sent an angry email on to someone (who forwarded it to the world).

This also goes for receiving an angry email and responding in kind. If you hit "reply all" you can pretty much guarantee that the person BCC'd in other people to your email, so you are broadcasting what you are really thinking.

Netiquette is to never send an angry email. Always have those conversations in person.

The best tip to save yourself is to set your email to only send and receive when you click the send/receive button, or at the least every 10 minutes. This gives you time to rethink the click.

8.Don't Stalk After Networking Events

After attending a networking event, many networking hunters send out an email promoting their product or service to people who attended the event. The netiquette problem comes when the people start out with "It was great to meet you at the event" when they didn't meet you and the closest they came was picking up your card from a trade table or email list.

Watch your language! If you did connect with someone, make a point of mentioning something you talked about in the conversation. Generally it is not polite to launch into pushing your products at the first email after the event. It is like asking someone to sleep with you on the first date (you may get lucky, but generally you will get a metaphorical slap in the face).

9.Make Sure All The Links Work

If your email includes a link to a webpage, test it before you send it to make sure it works. Receiving a dud link is not great for your marketing.

10.Check Your Details Are 100% Correct

Lastly, make sure all of your signature block details are correct. That means the correct phone numbers, fax numbers and website addresses. Many people don't see the mistakes in their own signature blocks but clients do!