Watch out with that email!

I’ve blogged about the importance of email etiquette in business communications, but recently I’ve been thinking about email in a different light. You can follow every email etiquette rule and still find yourself making silly mistakes. It all comes from how quickly we do things in our busy lives. Before we know it, we’re emailing too fast to notice we’re writing to the wrong person or forwarding sensitive information. We all make mistakes, but sometimes an email faux pas can ruin an important relationship.

 

For example, we use Microsoft Outlook here at North Star. It’s a great program, but we have to be careful when entering addressees. There’s an auto complete function that allows you to type in the first few letters of someone’s name and then the program completes the entry, guessing the intended recipient. This is great when you’re emailing on the fly, but if you aren’t paying attention you could accidentally send an email to the wrong person.

 

I have a friend who meant to send an email to a few family members to ask what they were bringing to her pot-luck dinner. She then received a response from a business contact that apologized for not being able to make it to her dinner and wondered if she had really meant to send the email to him. In fact, she meant to send it to her nephew with the same first name, and fell victim to the auto complete function! Luckily her contact thought it was a funny mistake and no harm was done.

 

A few weeks ago we received an email from a vendor. It seemed as though she meant to forward the email on to her boss, but instead hit the reply button and sent the email back to us. Her note included sensitive information not intended for a client. This wasn’t a relationship ruining blunder but certainly made everyone in the situation aware of the importance of accuracy in emailing to prevent friction between businesses.

 

Carelessness can also come back to bite you when you quickly forward on emails. You can get in big trouble if you don’t check the email chain below to make sure you’re not sending confidential or sensitive information to someone who shouldn’t see it. I encourage my team to re-read all email chains before forwarding. It’s one of the many steps we take to protect private information and preserve relationships with our clients, vendors, referral sources, and each other!

 

Have any email blunder remedies to share? I’d love to hear them! Drop me a line at april@fortheloveofmarketing.com.