Email has weathered all sorts of Technological disruptions of our time such as social media and all recent trends indicate that this form of communication, which itself was a radical disruption to postal Mail, is not about to die soon especially in the Enterprise sector.
However, despite its age-old history, some of us still do it right!
That’s sometimes due to the way that Email was designed, but for the most part, it’s how users interact with and use the tool. For instance, have you seen those forwarded emails with 100 people who have forwarded the email? The TO and CC fields each contain 20+ email addresses and that is at least 100 lines of scrolling to read the message. I can excuse this for personal mail, but when it comes to work mail I find this not only irritating but time wasting. If this was sent this to a busy executive, chances that they would never be able to read it, let alone reply it.
Many individuals lack the etiquette and basic understanding of how to use email for business dialogue. So how do you empower your employees to write reasonable emails that don’t compromise the privacy and security of your organization and yet still preserve and maintain your corporate brand image in your emails?
HR together with IT department have the responsibility of creating the standards and best practices that best represent the format of communication of the organization.
One of the best selling points email providers pitch to prospects is the identity their email addresses will provide them. All correspondence through organization’s provided email facility in one way or another represent the brand image of the organization. Improper use therefore opens the ones to negative consequences like;
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Risked privacy of your correspondents – as much as the information of the email is intended for the 200 people, not all the 200 people need to know who is receiving the information. Blasting this email therefore reveals the identity of your mailing list to all the 200 people in the list, which leads us to:
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Spammers and competitors – this is probably the worst, ever received an email from someone or company you don’t know – selling something? Well, did you ask how they got your email address? I bet they would not tell you, but the odds that they picked your email from such an email are high. When you do not protect your correspondents’ email identity you are practically dishing them out to your competition, spammers and all those guys out there.
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As a rule of thumb users should be implored to;
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Respect their correspondents. Respect and value their privacy, the value of our correspondents is not in only the money they pay you today, it is in the relationship you build that will pay greater dividends in the future – by risking the privacy of your emailing list, you will soon lose them
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Learn some email etiquette – use the email fields right; the fields being; the TO: CC : BCC: Message. At the basic level proper knowledge of this saves you the stress of having your entire client list leaked to the public.
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Consider using a bulk emailing software – the basic reason for this is that it does exactly what you are trying to do with your email client. Bulking emailing applications help organize and segment your lists and your recipients’ contacts will never receive addresses of fellow recipients. Built on standards of Spam act – these lists will save you the hustle of having to copy manually and pasting email addresses whenever you want to send an email to the same group.
With the increased penetration of the internet, emailing has been one of those business tools that we rely on for collaboration. Its use should therefore reflect the image of your organization with respect to the people you are corresponding with. It is the responsibility of the policy makers in an organization to set the standard that is followed company-wide.
Editor’s Note: About the Author.
Joshua Okapes is keen about technology, passionate about incorporating technology into routine business processes and sharing tech experiences for the last 10 years. He’s currently serving the industry with Hosteac – a web hosting and design brand of “Devterch Limited”. You can find him on Twitter @JOkapes
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