Some business contacts will know you only through your email communication. The tone you convey in your online messages should be respectful, friendly, and approachable. In this article, I’m going to discuss email etiquette.

• Check mail promptly. Generally, a response to email is expected within 24 hours. Ignoring messages from co-workers can erode efforts to create an open, honest, and cooperative work environment. On the other hand, responding every second may indicate that you are paying more attention to your email than your job.
• Do not send messages when you are angry. Email containing sensitive, highly emotional messages may be easily misinterpreted because of the absence of nonverbal communication (facial expressions, voice tone, and body language). Sending a flame, the online term used to describe a heated, sarcastic, sometimes abusive message or posting, may prompt a receiver to send a retaliatory response.
• Use a professional email address. If you work for a company, you should use your company email address. But if you use a personal email account-whether you are self-employed or just like using it occasionally for work-related correspondences, you should pick an email address that presents as a professional.
• Be cautious with humour. Humour can easily get lost in translation without the right tone or body language. In a professional exchange, it’s better to leave humour out of emails unless you know the recipient well. Also, something that you think is funny might not be funny to someone else.
• Keep your fonts classic. For business correspondence, keep your fonts, colours, and sizes classic. Your emails should be easy for other people to read.
• Nothing is confidential. Always remember that all electronic communication may be stored and rebroadcast, so, don’t write anything you wouldn’t want everyone to see.
• Be certain individuals need a copy of the email, and forward an email from another person only with the original writer’s permission.
• Never address an email requesting general action to more than one person if you want to receive individual response. Sharing responsibility will lead to no one taking responsibility.
• Follow company policy for personal use of email, and obtain a private email account if you are job hunting or sending many private messages to friends and relatives.

Source: Carol, M. Lehman Business Communication, Cengage Learning

Business writing can impact on the whole business cycle; it can win business; it can lose business and it can communicate the framework by which results can be achieved. The evolution of technology has increased the options of written communication in business sphere, email instant messaging and web communication are some of the written communication options brought by technology. Many organisations now rely on email as the sole form of official correspondence. Therefore, understand how to use email communication effectively is important to success in almost every career. In the following line we shall examine some of the best practices of sending an email.

• Send to single or multiple addressees. The same message can be sent to one or many recipients simultaneously. Sending an email message to multiple recipients simply involves keying the email address of each recipient into a distribution list and selecting the distribution list as the recipient.
• Provide a useful subject line. A descriptive subject line assists the receiver’s understanding of the message and serves as a reference point for future reference to it. Additionally, a well-written subject line in an email message will help the receiver sort through an overloaded mailbox and read messages in priority order. When writing a subject line, think of the five W’s—Who, What, When, Where, and Why—to give you some clues for wording. For instance, “Credit Committee Meeting on Monday” is a more meaningful subject line than “important Meeting.”
• Restate the subject in the body of the message. The body of the message should be a complete thought and should not rely on the subject line for elaboration. A good opening sentence might be a repetition of most of the subject line. Even if the reader skipped the subject line, the message would still be clear, logical, and complete.
• Sequence your ideas based on anticipated reader reaction. Endeavour to organise your ideas deductively when a message contains good news or neutral information; and inductively when the message contains bad news or is intended to persuade. Email messages may be organised according to the sequence of ideas, for example, time order, order of importance, or geography. As a general rule, present the information in the order it is likely to be needed. For example, describe the nature and purpose of an upcoming meeting before giving the specifics (date, place, time).
• Make careful use of jargon, technical words, and shortened terms. The use of jargon and technical terms is more common in email messages than in business letters. Such shortcuts save time with audiences who will understand the intent. In practicing empathy, however, consider whether the receiver will likely understand the terms used. And you may want to stick to universally acceptable shortened terms.
• Use graphic highlighting to add emphasis. Enumerated or bulleted lists, tables, graphs, pictures, or other images may be either integrated into the content of the email or attached as supporting material.
• Revise your email before clicking to send. Even the average email requires at least one pass to ensure that the intended message is clear, concise, and error-free. The number of passes increases depending on the number of people receiving the email and the complexity of the issue. Revising for brevity, accuracy, correctness, completeness and conciseness is a primary goal for messages read often on the run and on mobile devices.

Adhering to the important keys mentioned above will set you on the right path to using email effectively. I shall discuss some email etiquette in the part-two of this article.