Follow these rules so you can avoid awkward email interactions and communicate professionally over email.
For instance, this email:
“I’m sending this late on Friday, so I hope you receive it on Monday — didn’t want to send it over the weekend.”
This is a note from a person who scheduled an email to arrive on Monday morning instead of the weekend.
It is one example of proper business email etiquette: the rules (often unspoken) for interacting with colleagues and customers over email. We create these rules because it makes us look professional and helps us communicate better and more efficiently while respecting people’s time.
But email etiquette today is very different from what it was twenty years ago.
Business email etiquette rules in the modern world
The workplace is more relaxed than ever. Emojis are part of how we communicate, and with shorthand common thanks to social media, it seems only inevitable that unconventional ways of communicating would eventually filter into emails as they have.
Some would say this is sacrilege. The truth?
It’s a reality of email communication today. Just like language constantly evolves and rules are being bent, so does email etiquette.
To help you navigate these murky waters, here are 16 email etiquette rules for communicating in the workplace.
16 email etiquette rules for communicating in the workplace
Email etiquette 101
1. Don’t respond to an email when emotional.
For example, the client was late in paying — and it wasn’t the first time. It also wasn’t just a few days, but weeks. This kind of action may cause anger.
Odds are you’ve been in a similar situation or know someone who has. It’s easy to fire off an email in anger, but things rarely turn out well. Once you’ve written the words and sent the email, it cannot be undone.
So, take a step back, compose yourself, get outside advice, or sleep on it. You’ll come back refreshed and with a clear mind, ready to craft a balanced and professional email without the emotions attached.
2. Proofread your emails
The occasional spelling or grammar mistake is unavoidable. But if your emails are always littered with them, it’s a problem: You look unprofessional and like you don’t care about your job — not a good image to portray among colleagues and clients.
So, proofread every email before sending, especially those longer ones. It also doesn’t hurt to have a fellow colleague review your email before sending.
Don’t be shy to use tools like Grammarly to catch any errors.
3. Follow a proper email format.
When writing a formal business email, it’s wise to follow the correct email format:
Subject line: Describe what the email is about in a few words
Email greeting: Mention the recipient’s name and add a proper greeting
Body: Write the main message and one asking question.
Signature: Include your name, surname, company name, and sign-off
In the next section, we discuss each of these elements in more detail.
4. Check that the recipient’s name is correct.
It looks unprofessional when you’ve misspelled someone’s name. When cold emailing, it can also be the difference between closing a sale or not. You don’t have to get these basics wrong as long as you:
Proofread your email.
Check the person’s LinkedIn profile for proper spelling
Review their email signature if it’s someone you’re already emailing.
Email writing
5. Use emojis sparingly
It’s far easier to say, “Don’t use emojis — ever!” It saves you any trouble, even if it’s okay to use emojis in certain circumstances. But realistically, this won’t happen — and chances are you’ve probably already used them.
So here’s my take: You can use emojis in formal business emails, but use the right ones, use them sparingly, and use them with people you know well. For example, if you’re interacting with a new customer, you’re probably better off not using them unless they use them first.
Want to learn how to professionally communicate with emojis?
Typically, safe to use at work: 👩💼 👨💻 🙋😃 😎 🎉 🙌 💡 ✅ ➕ 💥 💼👏
Stay away from at work: 💩 💣 🍑 🔥 😜 😈 🍆 😘 👯🤮
Use emojis to be concise and build friendly work relationships
Using emojis at work can allow you to be more concise, create a closer bond with teammates, and grow your team culture in a positive direction. The more human your messages feel, the more likely people are to respond in a positive manner. When emojis are used to reinforce a message, you can help get your point across clearly.
If you do hop on the emoji train, it's extra important to know the common meanings and associations of each emoji, so you can stay away from the ones that might be misunderstood. You can brush up on your emoji meanings and associations in the handy Emojipedia.
6. Use shorthand in specific circumstances only
Writing in shorthand has its benefits: It’s fast; it’s efficient — and probably the only way to stay sane when your inbox is full. For example, CEOs are renowned for sending short, standardized responses to communicate their point.
However, shorthand is generally suitable in specific circumstances: When communicating directly with a colleague (e.g., about an important project) or client you’re close to.
If you’re unsure, err on the side of caution: Write the email out in full.
7. Keep emails concise.
Keep business emails brief while conveying critical information.
How brief?
According to research, the magic number is 50 to 200 words. Some emails may be shorter and some longer but, as a general rule, shorter is better. People today receive a lot of emails, so respect their time by cutting out unnecessary wordiness.
Examples:
Exclude easily misunderstood words or phrases
Some words and phrases just don’t have a great rap. One of the most infamous email phrases is “Per my last email.” While you might want to reference a past conversation, this phrase almost never makes the recipient of your email feel good. In fact, it mostly feels passive aggressive, as if you’re reminding someone that they failed to read your last message. Other problematic phrases?
- “As discussed”
- “If I’ve misunderstood”
- “Just a friendly reminder”
- "Actually"
Instead, just try asking the question again. Less passive aggressive options include:
- Are you able to let me know about this by ____?
- Can we circle back to ___?
- I have a question about ___.
Passive aggressive phrases aren’t the only minefield for misunderstanding. Overly formal wording or conventions like using a colon after the recipient’s name can also make people think you’re upset with them. If a phrase makes you sound like a robot, then it’s probably best to avoid it.
Professional email writing tip: Avoid niceties like, “I hope you had a great weekend” (yes, I’m guilty of using this one). Instead, get to the point and focus on one key point. For example:
Hi Maria,
The meeting we scheduled for 01/01/2022 at 11:00am has been pushed out to 01/07/2022 at 09:00am.
Best Regards, (Your First Name and Last Name)
Phone Number
8. Ensure subject lines are short and specific.
Subject lines should preferably be ten words or fewer — and, if you can, aim for seven.
Subject lines with seven or fewer words get opened more.
They should also be specific. For example, if you’re emailing a colleague for a project update, don’t title it “Checking in.” Rather say, “Checking in about [insert project name].”
To make sure your subject lines are hitting the mark, think about your:
Recipient: Knowing who you’re emailing (e.g., CEO vs. sales rep) will help with messaging.
Connection: Think of how to grab the receiver’s attention. For example, if you’re cold-emailing, mention a problem your product solves.
Defining cold email
Cold email is any email sent to a potential client that doesn’t have an existing connection to you.
Here’s a simple way to think about it:
If you send someone you’ve never met an email you found through a publicly available email address, it’s cold email. Or …
If you email an influencer you’ve never met asking for feedback on an article, it’s cold.
Successful cold emails should include:
- Your real name.
- Your contact information: job title, website, social media profiles, phone number, etc.
- Customized content for the recipient.
- A specific request.
- A conversation starter rather than a request to take quick action.
Successful cold emails are also:
- Usually sent from one small business to another, or from one individual to a public figure, such as a sales rep, sales manager, journalist, influencer, or editor.
- And they don’t always have a commercial motive.
Cold email is a one-on-one, personal conversation.
It’s like a cold call, but less intrusive and annoying.
A cold email is like sending an email to a business acquaintance, except the recipient doesn’t necessarily know you that well, if at all.
You’d send effective cold emails to get guest posting guidelines from editors, to get feedback from an influencer, or to start a conversation with a potential client.
Is Cold Email Spam?
Here’s one of the most common questions I get from students:
“How is cold email different from spam?”
Cold email and spam are polar opposites.
Here’s why…
Spam:
- Uses a fake name
- Doesn’t include contact information.
- Isn’t personalized. (the same email is sent to several people)
- Isn’t meant to start a conversation; rather, it’s usually targeting a direct purchase.
- Has a commercial motive.
- Gets filtered out by a spam filter almost automatically.
Spam is an example of a one-to-many emails.
Before you send out a cold outreach email, ask yourself:
Would I be comfortable saying this to someone I met at a conference for the first time?
If the answer is no, then it’s likely spam. If the answer is yes, then it’s a cold email.
Credibility: Spamming your prospect’s inbox with deceptive subject lines that encourage opens only causes distrust. Be honest — if it’s not a follow-up email, don’t act like it is.
Keep in mind that spam is illegal. Send too much spam and you will run afoul of CAN SPAM laws.
Cold Email vs. Unsolicited Email
It’s important to understand:
Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) is the official term for spam used by FTC meaning the Federal Trade Commission.
And UCE can range from sales emails to a newsletter from a company you’ve never heard of before.
If you don’t want to break the law, you should know:
If you didn’t explicitly give permission with an opt-in form, meaning, to opt-in, your recipients are signifying that they are interested in your content, cause, or company, which makes it highly unlikely that they'll feel the urge to report your emails. By choosing to opt-in, your recipient list is allowing you to send them information and demonstrating their trust in you.
Technically, cold email is unsolicited as well.
However, if sales emails have…
- appropriate header information
- is personalized
- and offers value proposition… then, it likely won’t be considered UCE or Spam by spam filter.
Don’t Break the Law
Are you clear about whether an email falls under the CAN SPAM laws?
It can be tricky. So let me break it down:
As per FTC, all sales emails can contain three types of information:
- Commercial content, such as selling a product, promoting a sale, etc.
- Relationship or transactional content, such as a bank sending its ideal customer a bank statement, an e-commerce store sharing transaction details, or a blogger sending a message to his list of subscribers.
- Other content, which can range from personal content to mixed (relationship + commercial) content.
According to FTC’s regulations, the purpose of an email decides whether it needs to comply with spam laws. If the email is primarily commercial – or is deemed to be so by the recipient – it has to comply with spam laws.
A well-crafted cold email might have a commercial tilt, but it also offers significant value.
Don’t forget that most organizations and people use some sort of identity monitoring and cybersecurity software (such as Aura for example or Norton, Malwarebytes, there are many alternatives) to protect themselves against email, wifi and identity fraud. It is very easy for anyone to manually mark any unsolicited emails as “spam”, in many cases the software does this automatically.
Once the software designates your email as spam (or someone marks it manually) you’ll be added to a blacklist and will have a TON of more problems trying to deliver your emails.
You can check if you are already on a blacklist by using the MXToolbox tool here.
You do NOT want to have your cold emails be classified as Spam and have your emails reside along these above in the Spam folder while your domain is on a blacklist.
Here are a few steps to take to make sure your emails are not marked as spam:
Don’t Send Spam
The more of these best practices you follow, the less likely your email will be seen as spam:
Use correct headers
The “email header” tells the recipient where the email is coming from.
Always use your own name and personal email address. This shows that you are a real person, not a random small business sending unsolicited spam.
Use the recipient’s first name
This is the easiest way to show that you didn’t just find a list of sales emails and spam them – use their first name.
A Hi {First Name} goes a long way towards making you sound more authentic.
Make it relevant to the recipient
What’s one of the biggest indicators of spam emails?
It’s irrelevant.
Spam emails seldom address the specific needs of the recipient. They just send out the same message to everyone, regardless of their requirements.
Always ensure that your email offers at least one thing that’s relevant or valuable.
Don’t talk about yourself too much
Know how to write a great intro?
Keep it short.
A long intro makes your email harder to read and it makes it sound like spam emails.
You don’t have to tell them that you are “John Doe from Acme Industries, the leading manufacturer of comically oversized gadgets for wily coyotes.”
Remember:
The only time you should even use an introduction is if you’re mentioning a common contact!
Match the subject line with the email body
Have you seen these subject lines in your spam folder:
“Heard rumors about you”
“Dear friend”
“Urgent! Please read!”
You should avoid these at all costs.
Writing a great subject line is simple, just keep in mind:
Subject lines are meant to tell recipients exactly what they’re going to get in the email body.
Add your contact info to the signature
Name, website, social media profiles, position in the company, phone numbers – these are the bare minimum you should have in your signature. If you can add a photograph, that’s great too.
Basically?
Show the recipient that you are a real person!
Continuing on:
9. Use proper salutations
A salutation is a fancy word for your email greeting. Your greeting can be formal or informal depending on the email’s context. For example, an email to a new client should generally be more formal than one sent to a close work colleague asking about their weekend.
Regardless, your greeting sets the tone for your email, so choose it wisely. Avoid any informal expressions like “Hey” or “Hi folks.” Instead, use “Hi” or “Hello.”
In contrast, steer away from overly formal greetings like “Dear Sir” or “Dear Madam.”
Why?
First, these expressions may not reflect a person’s gender. Second, they fail to mention the receiver’s name, making them impersonal. This is a particular no-no for cold emailing. It suggests you haven’t done proper research on the prospect, so why would they consider your email?
In general, you can start a formal business email with any of these greetings:
Dear (insert name)
Hello (insert name)
Hi (insert name)
Greetings (insert name)
Good morning (insert name)
Good evening (insert name)
10. Check email tone
Getting the tone right over email is hard. Interpreting it is even harder. People overestimate a recipient’s ability to identify if an email’s tone was serious or sarcastic.
They wrongly believe 80% would get it right when roughly 56% did.
The implications? Think carefully about word usage and how you frame your email. For example:
Avoid sarcasm: The recipient may not understand and take it the wrong way.
Frame your email positively: Use positive words (e.g., benefit and improvement) instead of negative ones (e.g., failure and mistakes).
Timing
11. Respond to emails promptly
In a perfect world, we’d respond to emails immediately. But busy schedules and cluttered inboxes means this isn’t always possible.
You’ll need to make a judgment call based on who’s sending the email and its importance. For instance:
Emails from your immediate team will take priority over those from other departments. Respond within 12 hours.
Emails from all other colleagues should be responded to within 24 hours.
Emails from your CEO should take preference over other emails. Respond faster than 12 hours.
Emails related to urgent projects should take priority.
Emails for less urgent matters can be attended to within four days.
If you’re having trouble getting to longer emails, send a quick reply acknowledging receipt of the email and inform the recipient you’ll respond within the next few days.
Email tip: Use a shared inbox to respond to emails faster. A shared inbox is an email inbox many teammates can access to send, receive, reply, forward, and archive emails from the same email address.
All interaction is visible to those who can access the inbox. Shared inboxes also offer other benefits.
12. Don’t send emails over the weekend.
People need time to disconnect from work, so it’s important to respect their time. Don’t send emails late on a Friday or over the weekend.
Plus, you’ll want to set an example for how you want to be treated. If you don’t want to receive emails about work during your Saturday afternoon barbecue, then don’t send them to others off work hours.
Take a cue from my client in the example at the start — and ensure your email arrives in your colleague’s inbox first-thing Monday.
Email recipients
13. Use email fields properly.
To: This is the field everyone uses. Include the email address of the person you’re emailing.
CC: Don’t overuse this field, as you’ll unnecessarily clutter peoples’ inboxes.
Use it in the following instances:
When the information in the email is relevant to the intended recipient, and you want to keep them updated.
When you want to make the email more of a priority. In that case, CC someone higher up in the company.
When you’re helping a co-worker with their work while they’re on holiday and want to keep them in the loop.
BCC: You can also use this field to copy in a recipient, but their email remains hidden to everyone but you. For example, if you email Amy and BCC Jake and John, each recipient won’t know the others also received it. BCC’ed recipients will only receive the initial email and not the replies.
Use BCC if you want to protect people’s emails from being exposed without their permission, e.g., if you’re sending a company newsletter.
Email tip: If you think a BCC’ed recipient may reply to an email with “Reply all,” use CC instead. “Reply all” will expose their email to everyone.
14. Use “Reply all” correctly.
When you “Reply,” you respond to only one person — either the original sender when responding to the first message or another recipient when replying to any message in the email thread.
But, when you click “Reply all,” you email everyone included in the To and CC fields. Only ever use “Reply all” if you feel your response is important and everyone should know, e.g., you’ve fixed an important issue the email raised. If you’re thanking a specific person, you’re better off just replying to them.
When in doubt, use “Reply.”
15. Use forwarding appropriately.
Forwarding lets you resend an email to another address in a few clicks. Forwarding is commonly used when the recipient believes the email’s information is vital to someone else who didn’t receive it. They’ll usually include a note like FYI (for your information) or “See below” in the message.
But, not all emails should be forwarded, and there is basic forwarding etiquette to follow:
Do not forward email containing sensitive information. If some of the email’s contents need to be forwarded, erase the sensitive information first.
For emails containing loads of information (e.g., long email threads), summarize the key points before sending so the recipient doesn’t have to sift through a bunch of old emails to figure out action items.
16. Remember to set out-of-office messages.
Out-of-office replies are automatic messages sent in response to incoming emails informing senders you’re out of the office until a specific date and will respond when you return.
These messages are commonly used when people go on vacation. They also include a note informing people who they can contact for any urgent requests. When writing one, keep it short. For example:
Good Day,
Thanks for your email. I am on leave until [insert date].
During this time, I’ll have no access to my emails.
For any urgent requests, contact Maria at maria@youremailaddress.com
May you have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
Best Regards,
Maria Darlington
The bottom line? Email etiquette rules are here to stay
Proper email etiquette will always be crucial because it orders our communication, improves efficiency, and makes us look professional. That’s why we have rules like using proper salutations, replying promptly, and setting out-of-office replies.
While we should continue to follow these rules to guide our email communication, we shouldn’t forget that the way we communicate is ever-changing.
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