Back in the late ’90s, I made a stark statement to my wife that went something like this, “I’ll never use email; what a silly waste of time.”
Man, how wrong was I (she continues to remind me.) Now I sit here as the spiritual leader of a group [some would call me a pastor], a traveling speaker and musician and a college professor; to stay up with my own life, email is my main form of communication. I know, I know–in the past 2-4 years, there has been some movement BEYOND email. The Pundits and magazines have been discussing this and the thoughts are mixed. None other than John Dvorak said it was dead back in 2009. The Wall Street Journal and Slate agree with him. Wired Magazine, however, isn’t so sure and neither is Gizmodo. I know my college students hate being asked to use email as our required communication tool.
I’m not sure if the issue is some fear of an electronic future where the powers that be can read everything we do, or maybe just some lament about the death of writing. As a professor, I can lament with others over the poor writing ability of people these days, but I also can see the silver lining to the electronic communication revolution in that people ARE actually writing more. Certainly, the day of handwritten cards and letters is gone (which is sad to some), but in its place we see millions of short, hand-typed cards and letters speeding along with the electronic postman. If anything, for those who understand, I am CLOSER to my friends, more in contact with them, than ever before. The newer forms of “electronic communication”–updates on facebook, email within facebook, twitter, IM–these all do the same thing: bring us closer through written communication.
In the end, perhaps email will die. Many will rejoice if it does. However, for now, most businesses and colleges continue to use email as an important communication tool. In your own best interest, you need to take steps to ensure that you handle email well. If email is going to stick around (and even if we are talking about email within Myspace, Facebook, Linked In or some other social network, we are STILL talking about a direct written message to you), then there are some etiquette rules that you must learn. Keep these in mind, will enable you to do well in the electronic world.
- Email is a communication concept—as hard as it is for people to get this, your email is like a phone number. As such, when you give out your email address, you are telling people “it is okay to communicate with me this way.” Think of it this way—most people would never give out their phone number and then refuse to reply to phone calls or messages left. Certainly there are some times that you get a phone message that you choose to ignore, but most of the time you respond. You call them back. And you do it within 48 hours most of the time (heck, for many of you, you do it within 48 seconds). An email demands the EXACT same level of response.
- If you don’t reply to my message to you, I think you are rude, angry at me, are refusing to talk to me, etc—believe it or not, not responding to an email is the same as not responding a phone call. Both took the same level of investment by me, the email actually took longer to accomplish and I would not have written/called unless I wanted to hear from you. So, you are being rude not to reply!
- You must check your emails at least once a day–Like phone calls, left untended, email tends to become more numerous. Imagine not answering your phone for a week; how many messages would you have? Now consider how difficult it would be to contact all those people; it would take all day to call them all back. Instinctively we know this, so we check our phone messages daily (or more often) and call people back. We know that if we don’t, in the end we won’t call them back at all and then we’ll look rude and, if these are potential clients, that is a huge mistake.
- You should reply to a personal message within 48 hours, at the LATEST–As stated above, you must reply. You would not ignore a phone message directly to you for more than that long.
- “But I have so many emails daily”—yes, on one of my 5 emails that I check daily, I receive an average of 200 emails. That is why you use a filter (I use Apple’s Mac Mail which is stellar) and you delete them as easily and quickly as you don’t answer the “unknown caller” on your caller ID. It takes about as long as it does to look at the caller ID to determine “this is not for me” and trash it (or not answer it).
- You don’t HAVE to have an email address—now this rule may be archaic in a few years, but for now that is still true and though, with the proliferation of cell phones that are “Dick Tracy-esque” in which you can do all things from there, I may already be wrong. In any case, you don’t have to have an email address and many people would make the world a better place if they’d just answer the question of “do you have an email address” with a simple “no!” “Why,” you ask? Check rule #1–email is a communication concept. If you tell me you have an email, then I am going to use it as surely as I will use your phone number. But if you don’t plan on replying, then we have a problem. So, if you DON’T want to communicate by email, then DON’T! Get rid of your every email address and live in peace.
- You don’t have to give your email address out—okay, so some of you have an email address due to work or school or whatever. But you hate email and you don’t plan on using it that often. Ok, then don’t ever give it out except in those cases that you are forced to (just your clients for instance). Again, the point here is to protect yourself and also people like me.
- Be honest with people about your preferred communication style—now, after years of frustration, I am in the habit of asking that question of new contacts: “Do you prefer email or phone?” It varies and I always tell the person that I hate phones and love email, so they need to be prepared to meet me halfway if they want to do business with me. But at least I go into the relationship knowing what they prefer.
- Group emails still mean you may have to reply—Of course this all depends on the group concept that you are a part of. My extended family uses it simply as information communication and it is clear that no reply is expected. However, my church also uses group email and from time to time, a clear expectation about reply is there. Make sure you check clearly to see if the sender expects a reply or not.
- Sometimes to help people, you have to clearly ask for a reply—as silly as it may seem, some people need that clear prompt that you expect a reply. Make sure you give them one if you want to be certain they reply. This is particularly important for group emails.
There may be other rules such as typing style or knowing the shortcuts to words on email or IM, but these will do for starters. Email remains an important form of communication and some think it will be with us forever. Prepare yourself for it, but protect yourself at the same time by keeping these etiquette rules in mind. Time is certainly short these days and you may feel compelled to not want to check your email. I feel the same way about cell phones; my time is short and I don’t want to be bothered or found every minute. So, until 2007, I didn’t have one. I still don’t really like to be “found” at any moment. Most of my friends typically send me messages, or speak with me in person. For a while, I simply remained Amish in intent and go phone-less. I miss that now, but since I have a phone, I certainly answer it when it rings and I reply to messages left to me.
You should do the same with email. Or, start answering those emails daily like you do your phone.