Biggest List of Email Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make

Be careful. Even a single email mistake can ruin your reputation.

#1Replying to an email without reading all the messages in the thread.It makes you miss important points/answers that you should already be aware of before replying.

#2Forwarding useless messages, chain emails etc.It’s not early 2000s, forwarding useless message wastes other people’s time and decrease your credibility. Always think twice before forwarding such emails and do it only if you think the other person would benefit from it.

#3Hitting the send button before you intend to.Prevent it by adding recipient’s email once you’ve finished drafting the email.

#4Including your signature in every email.Adding same long signature in every email becomes annoying in a threaded email. A good way is to add your signature in the first email and then only use your first name or initials in next replies.

#5Mistakenly replying to allThis generally happens when you reply back in haste. It’s always a good idea to take your time while replying to an important email.

#6Forgetting to add attachments.Most of the email clients alert you when you’re about to send an email if you have mentioned a word like ‘attachment’, ‘attach’ but haven’t actually attached a file. But a good practice is to attach the file as soon as you mention about it in the email.

#7Adding the wrong attachment.This happens purely by chance or when you’re in a rush. Make sure you take your time to select the right attachment or it might turn out to be a blunder.

#8Adding the wrong email by selecting the first one from the suggested drop down.When you have multiple email addresses of a person you tend to select the first one from the suggested drop down list while typing their email address. It’s always a healthy practice to look through the recipients email before hitting the send button.

#9BCCing the wrong person.Mixing up recipients between cc and bcc field can be disastrous. It’s always better to enter the recipient's’ email carefully once you’re done writing the email.

#10Not including a basic greeting.Sending your first email without a basic greeting sounds rude. The greetings can be formal or informal but it sets a good tone to your email.

#11Emailing when you’re angry or drunk.Don’t do it, enough said.

#12Writing with Caps Lock on.Writing in all caps is sometimes used to emphasize on certain words but writing a whole statement in all caps is equivalent to yelling in many cultures. Avoid doing that and instead you can bold the part which you want to lay emphasis on.

#13Being too formal.Being a little formal is required in some business communications but taking it too far will only get in your way of building good relationships.

#14Being too informal too quick.Special care should be taken when you’re starting a conversation with a business contact or someone you don’t know. Getting too informal might leave a bad impression on the recipient and undermine your credibility.

#15Sending a canned response without changing the dynamic fields.More the number of dynamic fields in a canned message more careful you should be while sending out the email. Double check it, always.

#16Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.Most email clients have an integrated spell checker but it is common for people to overlook that. There is nothing more annoying than having multiple spelling or grammatical errors in an email.

#17Writing an unnecessary long email.Don’t write a great American novel, keep it short and relevant.

#18Forgetting to account the email tone.Email does not contain non verbal cues like facial expression, body language etc and thus it becomes even more important to watch your tone while writing an email.

#19Breaking up over email.That’s just rude. Other person deserves better.

#20Using too many emoticons.While using email for business communication it is important to not use too many emoticons, it makes you look unprofessional.

#21Using a generic term like ‘To whom it may concern'.Your email has chances of being discarded if you use generic terms. Even if you don’t know the name of the recipient, you can always address the designation of the person, like Marketing Manager, Hiring Manager etc.

#22Adding too much information in your email signature.P.S - Read more about Terrible Email Signature Mistakes

#23Sending email without reading it over once.Double checking it before sending ensures you are not committing simple mistakes like like ‘sneak peak’ and mixing up ‘there’ with ‘their’.

#24Spending too much time managing emails.Managing email is not your full time job. McKinsey Global Institute found out that an average office worker spends over a quarter of his day dealing with emails. Try to be more productive with your time.

P.S - Read more about how to be more productive in your inbox.

#25Not knowing when to use ‘To’ and ‘CC'.There are no hard and fast rules on how to use ‘to’ and ‘cc’ fields but a generally accepted guideline is that when you add someone to ‘to’ field it means you are expecting their reply and ‘cc’ is used to keep people in loop.

#26Not implementing the NNTR/NRN policy.NNTR = No Need To Reply NRN = No Reply Needed

Sometimes you just have to reply out of politeness even when there is no need for an additional message. At this moment when you know the conversation is going to end, you should add a message like ‘No response is necessary’.

#27Vague subject lines.It’s always good to have a concise yet relevant subject line. Adding elements like ‘[Urgent]‘ at the start of your subject line can additionally help recipient know if the email require immediate response.

#28Failing to use inline reply.Grouping your replies together for an email that has questions in bullet points make recipient scroll up and down through the email. Inline reply serves as a good practice here, makes it easier to read replies relative to the question.

#29Thinking no one will ever see your email apart from intended recipient.Once an email is sent, consider it public because you have no control over who can see the email afterwards.

#30Not providing an alternative contact in your vacation auto responder.It’s always a good practice to specify an alternate contact in your vacation autoresponder in case of an emergency.

How many of these have you made so far?Tell us your score in the comments below...

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