What is Your Email IQ? by Greg Merkley Email Email Email Email
* Basic skills (score 1 point for each question answered "Yes")
1. Have you ever received an e-mail? This is just to get you started.
2. Have you ever sent an e-mail? Everyone needs to start somewhere.
3. Have you ever copied (CC) or blind copied (BCC) other recipients on an email? It's important to know that BCC addressees aren't visible to anyone that receives the message - this could save your job.
4. Have you ever forwarded an e-mail to someone else? Forwarding is one of the beauties of e-mail: you can easily share something with someone else or send an errant message to the right person
5. Have you ever redirected an e-mail to someone else? Redirecting a e-mail preserves the original sender information, while forwarding makes you the sender.
*Intermediate skills (score 2 points for each question answered "Yes")
1. Do you use a signature file in all your e-mails? In addition to being a great opportunity to promote your business by including your name, company, phone and fax, signature files can be invaluable in helping the recipient figure out who you are.
2. Do you file your e-mail in a systematic way? If you don't have a system for filing, E-mail can lose a lot of its value and become a bigger burden than a stack of faxes.
3. When replying to e-mails do you quote the original message appropriately? Quoting can be essential in order to provide context in a reply, but it can be tedious and confusing to look through pages of quoted signatures and e-mail headers.
* Advanced skills (score 3 points for each question answered "'Yes")
1. Do you use filters to automatically sort and prioritize e-mail? Filters identify certain types of messages and perform an action on them so you can file and categorize a large number of messages without becoming overwhelmed.
2. Have you successfully sent documents as attachments? Sending attachments is easy, but succeeding can be hard if you don't consider possible incompatibilities in operating systems, software versions, computer hardware or compression/encoding technology.
3. Do you check the spelling and grammar of every message you send? Unlike the telephone, e-mail is a written form of communication and you will be judged based on how well you write, not how well you speak.
* Etiquette skills (score 5 points for each question answered "Yes")
1. Do you reply promptly to every legitimate e-mail? This question is weighted heavily because most companies and most people do a poor job in this area, at least by comparison with the telephone. In my opinion, "promptly""means within one business day .
2. Are your e-mails written in a tactful, courteous and honest manner? Your message may be forwarded to many people (including anyone you may savage in the body of the message), so avoid embarrassing yourself and offending others by thinking twice before you click "Send".
So, how did you do? Here is my unscientific scoring chart:
0-10 points You have a lot to learn
11-15 points You're making progress. Keep it up!
16-20 points You can e-mail with confidence
21-25 points You're the office e-mail specialist
26-30 points Go to the head of the class! You're an e-mail e-xpert!
About the Author:
Greg Merkley, based in Evanston, Ill., is the founder and
president of Travel Technology & Magic, which publishes the
PositiveSpace.com Web site and e-mail services for travel
agents at http://www.positivespace.com. He can be contacted
by e-mail at greg@traveltechmagic.com or by telephone at
847.869.1551.
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