Netiquette and business email

This post is a continuation of the previous two. Included here are definition of three additional catagories of mail; business, spam and invitations The next blog will feature two more.

 

 

        7)     Business - None of the different email categories have more of a need to employ Netiquette than business related emails. Basically, virtually all categories of Netiquette are important within the business email.  The composition and distribution of business emails requires full attention and care.  This is due in part to the fact that no category of email, other than solicitation or junk mail, is typically as distanced interpersonally as this category is.

         Any item related to a business email can have a profound or immediate effect in the business correspondence.  This can be something such as the capitalization of a word, a punctuation mark, the salutation and so forth.

         Personal, casual or even generic emails present far more tolerance to Netiquette mistakes. For example, an email sent to a relative which does not capitalize their name will rarely be taken badly but a similar error in a message sent to a stranger in a business context might easily be noticed and reacted to negatively.  There is a great deal of detail involved with business communications.  These will be presented in future blog postings.  The specifics will be characteristics of these forms:

1.       Business to business

2.       Business to customer

3.       Marketing

4.       Invitations

5.       Business introductions

6.       Cover - resumes

7.       Cover - other attachments

8.       Newsletters

9.       Complaints

10.        Employment - offer/acceptance/decline

11.        Scheduling

12.        Memorandum of understanding

13.        Cover - proposal

14.        Reference

15.        Billing - reminders/invoices/other notifications

16.        Promotion

17.        Letter of credit

18.        Acknowledgement of receipt

19.        Non-disclosure

20.        Thank you

 

        8)     Spam - More than 85% of internet email is spam.  Realistically, no user is fully able to avoid all the spam which they are sent, regardless of filters, removal requests or other means of reducing these unwanted communications.  Netiquette, in  terms of spam, is primarily for the sender of messages.  The lack of good Netiquette can actually result in a sender's email appearing to be spam.  A lack of a subject field, unusual sender identifier, improper subject line content or email content can cause filters to have an important correspondence being relegated to a "junk" email box, being returned or dropped altogether.

        More on this topic will be addressed subsequently but one very important item to conclude this section is that by having an email "bounced" the user may be blacklisted by not only a destination but by a service provider or internet security organization. 

         9)     Invitations - Requests or invitations have rapidly proliferated from USPS mail to internet email.  Netiquette is very important in sending or replying to invitations Just as "proper" traditional invitations and RSVP's were elaborately outlined and detailed by Emily Post and others, the rules of Netiquette follow many of these foundations.  Most people enjoy having an engraved invitation, published on fine paper with very fancy typefaces often in a cursive mode.  Many of these include their own envelopes, precluding the avoidance of traditional etiquette mistakes by the recipient.

 

        With the above considerations in mind, it is logical to assume that a well Netiquette-structured email for a social invitation or "evite" will be appreciated, probably expected.  Anything less than a message which is well constructed might serve a disappointment to the invitee.  It is usually best to include one possibly two attachments.  The first would be a printed invitation and second a response form with the requisite particulars.

 

        The focus of this section has been on those invitations which are more socially oriented.  There are more types of invitations which will be blogged and addressed in detail by future blogs. Among these type are meetings, educational sessions, on-line presentations and others.