A Bad E-mail

Email is an important tool of communication in business. These are legal documents and need a proper care to write and manage. Today, 90% of business communication depends on e-mail messages. Sometimes people send bad e-mails to others unintentionally which destroy their reputation. An e-mail tends to be bad if it is long and time consuming. Sometimes sender do inaccurate writing, grammar mistakes and use angry words. This can effects customer/ clients, suppliers, staff, co-workers and organization. A bad e-mail may have following problems:

• May not includes greetings
• Subject line may not be informative
• Opening do not reveals the main idea
• May not provide context to reader and includes bad response
• May not reflects any action to take
• Less visibility and transparency
• No complimentary closing
• Bad use of BCC

Guffey, M.E., Rhodes, K., & Rogin, P. (2011). Business communication:  Process and product (6th Canadian ed.). 

A Good E-mail

E-mail messages are standard forms of communication. A good e-mail must have following parts:

• a subject line that summarizes the message
• an opening that reveals main idea
• a body that explains the main idea
• a closing that presents action information, summarizes the message, or offers a closing thought.

Subject line: In a good email, it is mandatory. It highlights the purpose of e-mail. Some people who do not have time to read the whole e-mail they just give a glance at a subject line and decide whether to read the message.

Opening: Begin by front-loading, opening must reveals the main idea. Even though subject line summarises the main idea, that purpose should be restated and amplified in the first sentence.

Body: The body provides more information about the reason for writing. Body explains and discusses the subject logically. Design the data in easy comprehension by using numbered lists, headings, tables, and other graphical techniques.

Closing: In closing, e-mail ends with an action information, dates or deadlines; a summary of message; or a closing thought.

Guffey, M.E., Rhodes, K., & Rogin, P. (2011). Business communication:  Process and product (6th Canadian ed.). 


http://www.google.ca/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=DWXEmKdfAQFuoM:&imgrefurl=http://www.woudstra.com.au/blog/2008/10/13/so-what-does-an-email-look-like-with-good-email-etiquette/&docid=Zc4SZM_IBeO8gM&imgurl=http://www.woudstra.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/screenshot3212.jpg&w=690&h=678&ei=9SjqT9rZBuT86gHms8WVAQ&zoom=1&biw=1366&bih=667

How e-mail works?

There are two servers on a single machine, one send e-mails and other receives. One is Called Simple Mail Transfer Protocol which handles outgoing messages. The other is Called POP3 where POP stands for post office protocol which handles incoming messages.When an e-mail is sent, e-mail client interacts with  SMTP to handle the sending. The SMTP server on host side may have conversations with other SMTP servers to deliver an e-mail.

The video below is really interesting.This video shows how an E-mail works. Check out this to learn more.

http://search.proquest.com.library.sheridanc.on.ca/docview/221064023

Writing process of E-mail

Developing skills in writing e-mails messages brings two important benefits. First, well written documents achieve their goals easily. These type of documents create goodwill by being cautions, caring and clear. Second, it helps to enhance the image of people within an organization. As e-mail is powerful channel of communication so it requires a special attention to compose the message. An e-mail follows a 3*3 writing process:


Analysis, Anticipation, and Adaptation: This step includes various questions which are as follows:

• Do I really need to write this e-mail?
• Should I send an e-mail or hard copy memo?
• Why am I writing?
• How will reader react?
• How can I save reader's time?

Research, Organization, and Composition: In this step, sender gathers files, documents and organize it into an outline. After this, sender compose the message, and revise it for clarity, correctness and feedback.

Revision, Proofreading, and Evaluation: It involves the final touch on the message. The sender viewed the e-mail from the receiver's prospective.

E-mail Header and Body

The header of e-mail is consist of fields such as To, From, CC, BCC, Subject and Date and other information.

From: It contains the e-mail address of sender or author. 

To : It includes the e-mail address of receiver. It also give option to include multiple recipients.

CC : It stands for Carbon Copy. It is used to send a copy of e-mail to many recipients. The addresses in this field written in CC are visible to all recipients.

BCC : It stands for Blind Carbon Copy. It is similar to CC but not visible to other recipients.

Subject : It includes a brief summary for the purpose of the message in abbreviated form.

The Body of e-mail consists of information or text, attachments and a signature block similar to letters. The opening of an e-mail should include a greeting. After the greeting, explain the reason behind the e-mail and give details. There should be double space between the paragraphs. The information in the e-mail should be error free and take care over spelling, grammar. Attachments are used to attach files, pictures and videos.




http://www.google.ca/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=ABjY7EcF7Z9zbM:&imgrefurl=http://help.yahoo.com/tutorials/mmail/mmail/mm_compose1.html&docid=iYuP0NrtlxhKrM&imgurl=http://help.yahoo.com/cpp/images/mmail/ml_composepg_yp_4.gif&w=660&h=585&ei=NoznT5DQLufl0QHO6djuCQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=756&vpy=343&dur=12985&hovh=211&hovw=238&tx=108&ty=163&sig=114447704316664421665&page=1&tbnh=135&tbnw=152&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0,i:80&biw=1366&bih=624

what is an E-mail?

E-mail is known as Electronic mail. It is a method of exchanging digital information between sender and receiver. E-mail is most popular form of asynchronous communication. An e-mail message has three parts: the message envelope, the message header, and the message body. It is an effective and efficient means of mass distribution. Now- a- days, most businesses rely on e-mail for many internal communication needs. In businesses, people use e-mails to exchange, collect and store information about products and services. It has changed the way of interaction with people. In the past, e-mail system was based on File Transfer Protocol (FTP) but today e-mail system use Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).Today, the model of e-mail is a store and forward model which enables the computer server to accept, send and store messages. World Wide Web (WWW) enables us to send e-mails.

Discussion/ your view

What you think about FTP and SMTP? How these work?

References:

Guffey, M.E., Rhodes, K., & Rogin, P. (2011). Business communication:  Process and product (6th Canadian ed.). 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email