How To Laser Your Email Messages

If you're in business and use email, you've likely leraned to KISS (keep it short & simple). However many people still think that writing an electronic mail should be like writing a letter to Aunt Sally. Letters are traditionally long and detailed. With email, however, you need to be laser-like, or risk losing your reader half-way through the first paragraph.If you spend a lot of time with electronic mail like I do, you really appreciate emails that are short, to the point, and stick to one topic (this makes it easier to find the information later). Use plenty of white sapce to make the electronic mail fast to read.
Do this by using short 2 to 3 sentence paragraphs, and keeping the length of the electroinc mail to 4 or 5 short paragraphs.

If you go much longer than that, it might be set aside for reading later.It's also imporatnt to put thought into your Subject line so that the recipient has a clue as to what the electronic mail is about. For example, rather than saying, 'I have a question for you', you could say, 'Question about our meeting tomorrow'.Something else that can be really helpful when replying back and forth to emails is to change the Subject line if the subject changes from the original electronic mail.

I have had a hard time finding an eelctronic mail by subject line when the person sending me the electronic mail replies to me and the topic we're talking about doesn't have anything to do with the Subject line any more.And here is the most useful tip I can give about lasering your electronic mail messages.

When having an electronic mail discussion, cut out parts of the electroinc mail that no longer apply, and place your reply underneath the paragraph or sentence you're replying to.
Here's an example of an electronic mail dialogue:==========At 10:36 AM 10-28-04 -07:00, you wrote:>> Wow, I can't think the leaves are almost completely off>> the trees already!

Do you like animated movies?

I hear Shark Tales is prettygood!

>> I am searching for quick and fast recipes that I can whip>> up in a half-hour or so.
If you have any web sites or>> cookbooks you can recommend I'd appreciate it.Check out Minute Meals (http://www.Allfood.Com/mmeal.Cfm).They have a quick and healthy section you might like.==========Pretty fast to read, isn't it?

It's just like a conversation. You'll notice that each reply is listed directly under the original statement (which had been reduced down to only the message that needed to be responded to).
Most electronic mail programs will automatically put the >> in front of the original email, so you can easily see who wrote what.If you're a business user of email, I encourage you to sharpen your skills for sending and replying to electronic mail. It will save you time and energy so that you'll have more time for bigger and better things!