Today we look at some of the best ways to use email to annoy everyone you communicate with.
Remember that one time you went on vacation and when you came back to the office you had 119 emails awaiting you in your inbox?
Or how about the time you attached a bunch of files to an email that your boss needed ASAP, but when you hit the “send” button you got an error message saying that your email had exceeded the file size limits.
I could go on with more examples, but I think you get the point: email can be very frustrating. A time-waster. A black hole of lost information.
You can take steps to make email more effective for both you and your recipients, but if you don’t mind causing lots of frustration, here are a few of the best ways to use email to annoy your recipients.
Even if your email provider allows you to send that massive file (if it doesn’t go over the size limits), your recipient has to deal with opening that file at the other end. And if they have to download it to open it, you run the risk of irritating them because it either takes the file forever to load or hogs up a bunch of space on their computer.
(Fortunately, there are some services out there now that have no file-size limits and offer formats that eliminate the need to download anything. Take a look at this one.)
The subject is the first thing your reader sees, and it can provide substantial clues regarding the content of your email and what action you are expecting. Vague, nondescript subjects such as “Hi” don’t help the reader understand what you are trying to accomplish.
It is easy to shoot an angry email to someone but so hard to reverse the damage that is done. It is also easy to be perceived as being uncivil when that wasn’t the intention.
Go the extra mile with a personal greeting, “please” and a “thank you” in your email. It will set the right tone for conversations. More specifically, at the beginning of an email, write “Hello Bill” or “Hi Angela” before diving into the subject.
According to “You Won’t Finish This Article: Why people online don’t read to the end,” most people read only 50% of an email, webpage, online article, etc., before they bounce to the next thing they have to read.
This implies that anything too long will just be skipped, skimmed over, or ignored by half of your recipients. Remove all unnecessary information to keep your messages short and focused.
For example, if you ask about an update on a project, mention it specifically. Don’t ask “what’s going on with that proposal?” Instead, write “please provide me with a status update on the company proposal we discussed on Thursday.”
If you have a critical message that needs to stand out from the hundreds of emails bombarding people every day, you should consider enhancing the delivery format beyond just basic text to something more attention-getting. Attachments and links to videos can provide more explanatory power and make your message more impactful.
