When email is not the best choice …

For the last few weeks, off-and-on, I’ve been blogging about the things people do when they send email that negatively impacts both their credibility and effectiveness.  My last post was on how it’s critical to offer your phone number as an alternate way for your email recipients to contact you.  Today I thought I’d make one final point that’s been at the back of my mind ever since we started on this subject.

In my opinion, the biggest blunder that people make with email is sending one when they shouldn’t!  There are times when picking up the telephone or walking down the hall to talk to the person is a far better alternative than sending an email.  Sure, email may seem easier at first blush, but if your message is likely to escalate emotions, then email should never be your first choice, or for that matter, any choice.  In fact, email in such situations is more likely to deteriorate into what I call “email warfare” – a rapid-fire exchange of emails, each one more emotionally-charged than the last, and usually cc’d to additional people in each round.  Never a recipe for a positive outcome!  As powerful as the written word can be, it simply cannot reflect the nuances that exist in facial expressions, body posture, tone, pace, pitch and volume of voice.  Which means that emails can be easily misunderstood, particularly when the topic being discussed is emotionally-charged.  The alternative: talk to the person face-to-face, or if that’s not possible, pick up the phone.  Even a voice mail is preferable to an email in such circumstances.

Well, have you observed situations of “email warfare” gone horribly wrong?  Do tell.

Even with email, make it easy for people to phone you

Since we’ve been talking about email effectiveness here on the blog for the last little while (getting the subject line right, not sending FYI emails, and the importance of grammar and spell check), here’s one more.  Make it easy for your addressee to get a hold of you.  Make sure your signature line has at least one alternate way to contact you.  You want people to act on what you say, right?  So make it simple.  Sometimes, the other person will realize that a back-and-forth email exchange is not the best way to resolve whatever it is you’re discussing.  Give them easy access to your phone number so that they can pick up the telephone and get things dealt with.  Don’t make them hunt for this information, make it effortless for them.  Here’s the odd thing about this – people may not notice that you’re offering up this alternate way to contact them.  But they sure as heck will notice if you don’t.  Do you really want to be remembered because you irritated them?  Yeah, didn’t think so.  So make sure that you have your phone number or other easy way for people to contact you right there in your email signature line.

Next blog post I’ll have one final idea in this series.  But in the meantime, what else do you have to add to the list of how people (unknowingly) sabotage their credibility through their email communication?  Tell us, so that we can all be warned!