9 Things You Should Avoid In Business Emailing

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Business emails are increasingly becoming a staple form of business communications. 81% of small to medium size businesses use email as their primary channel for customer acquisition. Why? Because 92% of adults use email, making it a popular platform among adults.

Email marketing is the right direction for businesses, but it is important to design a winning campaign to yield beneficial results. Content is an important part of business emailing but packaging the content well is equally important.

Business emailing is all about finding the right balance between correct practices and good formatting. Just like there are key elements of business email communications, there are things you should avoid as well.

We have created a list of 9 things you should avoid in business emailing, to ensure your email campaign yields the desired results.

Bad Email Signature

An email signature is the last thing your reader sees in an email, so make sure you save the best for the last. To understand this further, let us distinguish between a bad email signature and a good email signature.

A bad email signature is one that does not have a clear take-away, one with confusing contact details, and one that does not add value to your email content.

A good email signature is one that has clear contact details, links to additional business details, such as social media and websites, and one that has a clear call-to-action.

Once you have decided what you are going to add in your email signature, designing it well is equally important. There are great email signature platforms like Newoldstamp and Mysignature that can help you generate the signature you need and want.

Gossips

Business emailing should be used for business purposes and things like gossip is unprofessional. So, it seems straightforward that people would be professional and avoid gossip in business emailing.

Yet, 1 out of 7 office emails include gossip. Along with being highly unprofessional, email can be easily traced and can jeopardize your credibility.

Gossip in general can be harmful, it can be particularly harmful for the perpetrator and perpetrated if it is done via business email. Make sure you use business emailing for business purposes and do not draft or engage in gossip emails. This will help you maintain workplace professionalism and become better respected.

Emojis

With more and more communications happening through our smartphones and via messages, emojis are a staple part of our daily communications. While emojis are a staple in personal communications, are they appropriate in business communications etiquette?

Emojis are an informal way of communicating, while they might be able to adequately express emotions, they are not designed for business communications.

In fact, psychology studies have shown that emojis make you appear less competent. The last thing you want is to lose credibility in your communication method, so it is best to avoid emojis.

CAPS Letters

Capital letters denote shouting in text form. Consequently, the use of CAPS will make it seem like you are shouting in an email.

Regardless of the purpose of your email, we can unanimously agree that shouting is never a message you want to get across. Often, the intention of capital letters is to add emphasis to a point or word, but this is not what capital letters help achieve.

It is a formatting blunder and should be avoided at all costs, because capital letters make the sender appear unprofessional and thereby reduce their credibility. Since you do not want your clients and prospects to see you as someone that lacks communication skills, avoid capital letters in business emails.

Informal Salutations

Firstly, let us start by establishing what an informal salutation is. Something like “hey” or “hello there!” are inappropriate. But, something like “to whom it may concern” is also impersonal.

Stick with “Dear sir/ ma’am” or “Dear Team” etc. are a nice and warm way to start out an email. Also, if you are addressing a group it is fine to name up to 5 people, but beyond that stick with a team salutation. When you sign off, stick with “regards” as it works well with all settings.

Avoid informal salutations and set the tone of your business email right from the first word until the last one.

Jokes

A business email is not the space to crack a joke. The purpose of business writing is to have a clear call to action and to get a point across while maintaining professional decorum.

Make sure you maintain professionalism in writing by avoiding jokes. Also, check to see that things like email newsletters and other email campaign material goes from a non-reply sender. That way you can avoid things like awkward out of office or other auto-responses.

Remember, save the jokes for verbal communications with clients or prospects.

Toxic Phrases

Whether you are in a meeting room or sending something to a client prospects mailbox, you should avoid toxic language and phrases at all costs. For example, never assume a stance via email or never use words that could potentially have double meaning.

Verbal and written communication have one thing different, that is tone and context. While you can create all the build-up needed a poorly placed word or phrase can take away from your entire message. Stick with action words and avoid ambiguous words and you will be good to go. 

Not Business-oriented Content

While you might be interested in promoting a cause that can get a lot of help from your business mailing list, this is not the place for such content. When people subscribe to your mailing list, they subscribe to the content your business aims to promote or sell.

So, anything outside this domain is marked as not business-oriented content and should not be a part of your business emailing. If you spam your clients or prospects with content you are not interested in, your list will shrink and that is not what you are aiming for. Long story short, stick with business related content at all times.

Not Appropriate Acronyms

Though acronyms are an efficient way of communicating, it holds the risk of taking away from your message. While there are certain phrases that you have to abbreviate, as a general rule of thumb it is best to avoid acronyms in general.

Particularly, acronyms of slangs and informal language uses should be avoided at all costs. Remember, the purpose of a business email is to get your point across with professionalism. So, make sure you avoid acronyms, particularly informal acronyms.

Business emailing is an opportunity to build connection with messages that have a clear call-to-action. When you do this by using authoritative language and by avoiding common mistakes, you will eliminate simple things that can irk potential customers and clients.

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