Professional Email

With email now the most popular form of business communication, maintaining a professional demeanor with email is paramount to making a good impression on clients, both new and old.

AOL Small Business has an article on "How to Avoid Office E-Mai Disasters," which outlines several common email mistakes that are easily avoidable.

First, treat business emails like formal correspondence, not an informal message to your BFF. Use proper English grammar. If you're unsure about a sentence structure or word usage, check out GrammarBook.com or Grammar Slammer for help.

Use spell check. Most email programs have spell check, so sending out missives with misspellings is easily avoidable. I use Outlook Express and have it set to automatically check spelling when I hit the send button. That function has saved me from many an embarrassing typo.

Use proper formatting. Line and paragraph breaks and proper punctuation allow for the reader to more easily digest your message. Without those, the email can look like one huge run-on sentence or collection of meaningless words.

Lastly, make sure you respond in a timely manner. This means answering the actual email within a reasonable time frame, but it also means making sure you take time in crafting your answer. We've all hit "reply all" when we didn't mean to, or sent an email to the wrong person because we didn't slow down enough to check the name in the "to" box.

Email is a great communication tool, especially for home-based businesses. But poorly written emails can produce the wrong impression and could cost you clients or customers.

Until next time,

Sarah