I asked DevWebPro readers what they expected from professional email, and the responses poured in. Find out what people who are receiving your email expect to see. Read on for views on HTML mail, Outlook, a few criticisms of DevWebPro, plus grammar gripes and misspelling misery.
In response and defense of using Outlook, I can claim many good reasons. My Palm integrates with it, and co-ordinates the rest of my office software to it seamlessly. Most of the mail I receive (including your newsletter) is in HTML, and much of it needs immediate response within my somewhat strained timetable – additional clicks and loading secondary software are an inconvenience.
The most pressing reason for me, is that I used to use Pegasus myself. I found that it had great incompatibilty issues, often manifesting itself in unacceptable ways. Patches and updates seemed to follow new advances far to slowly. This was admitedly a couple of years ago, so perhaps the program and support have improved with time.
– C.Furness
IMHO, a “professional email” is one that clearly addresses whatever issue is being discussed without distractions. Note I’m not talking about emails whose primary purpose is marketing – that’s a totally different discussion.
Email formatting and style, if present, must not detract from the primary message.
A sig should provide the necessary information about the sender and perhaps a minimal marketing message.
In short, the “email” itself must not detract from the primary message the sender is trying to get across.
I receive too many emails where the email formatting and style overwhelm the message. I tend to delete these without reading them, or grudgingly read them if the content is vital. But I don’t like to be made aware of the formatting and style. If successful, formatting & style adds to the message being successfully communicated. If it is so distracting it makes you aware of it, it has failed.
Just my (insert your favorite currency here) 0.02 worth.
– Stephen D. Poe, CEO Nautilus Solutions
Jackie, I enjoy your columns in DevWebPro. I wanted to give my opinion about what constitutes a “professional email”.
I think a personal email can be very informal and use abbreviations, emoticons, or whatever the sender thinks will give a personal touch.
Professional or business email should be more conservative. It should be more like a business letter with a salutation and a closing. Proper spelling and grammar are important, so proofreading before sending is critital. That’s another advantage to using Outlook. It has a spellchecker.
For emphasis, it’s nice to bold or color portions of text.
– David Warshowsky, President Nicem Technologies, Inc.
Dear Ms. Rosenberger,
Your question concerning professional e-mail was timely. One of my clients would like to solicit affiliates and improve back-links for his site. Unfortunately, this client has a tendency to use all the OE geegaws in his messages to me. Frequenty the messages I receive include very enlarged fonts, making it appear as if he is shouting at me. I have learned that the results at the receiver end do not necessarily match what the sender intended, and the sender is totally unaware of the appearance. My advice to him will include the usual recommendations for politeness, brevity, a clear message, good grammar, accurate spelling and punctuation, and return contact information. In addition I will tell him bluntly to stick to plain text when contacting prospective targeted affiliates, link partners and other business associates.
– Fiona Dudley, www.weaversites.com
I wonder if the person who wrote that using “Outlook produces more professional appearance” was referring to the spell check? I know that is why I use it. I tend to let my fingers outrun my brain. Most of the emails I send and receive are very Plain Jane, but incorrect spelling either on a web site or in a letter tends to make me doubt the persons professionalism.
I haven’t used the other programs except Yahoo! so am not a good judge of email programs.
– Donna Frederick, http://whitepinecountygenhelp.accessgenealogy.com/
Perhaps presentation does contribute to the professionalism of email, but I believe that much larger factors are spelling, grammar and clear, concise thinking. Without those, presentation is meaningless.
– Ted Cantrall
The individual who wrote claiming to use outlook to produce professional emails is probably a spammer. Or at least someone who sends out ads, and maybe an ezine.
However, a true professional email will be plain text due to the fact that people corresponding on a professional level, do not have the time to create the html code in order to make their email look profesional.
It just shows that people have some realy strange ways of looking at things. I wonder who it was that sold this person on how to make an email look professional.
– Scott
Personally, I feel that a “professional email” is one that uses the minimum amount of bandwidth. In most cases I prefer no decoration to my messages. When I’m doing business I’m doing business. I don’t want anyone distracted from my message by cutesy stationery.
I like the option of a cute background for friends, so I got incredimail.
– C. Little
Professional email has —>
1) A clearly defined Sender (Max@headroom.com, as opposed to “Garden Views xhjt235”)
2) A clear Subject line (“Request for link exchange”, as opposed to “Please try again”)
3) A simple salutation (“Dear So and So”, as opposed to “Hey there!”)
Call me old-fashioned, but ….. that’s my 2-cents’ worth.
– Mili De Brown, www.MiCaminito.com
Hi, Jackie!
For whatever it’s worth; “professional” e-mail is straight-forward, simple, and to the point. Don’t waste my time with distractions.
Wild font, colors, animations, bells, whistles, gizmos, etc. are for either the very bored or the playful kid in most of us. And it’s OK for that playful kid can peek out occasionally, but hopefully at appropropriate times.
– Dale
Hi,
I think emails should be composed in plain text for two reasons.
1) you know exactly how they will be viewed. Viewing html emails from a web browser (or from various clients) produces unknown results.
2) viruses can not be attached to plain emails. Therefore you reduce the risk of forwarding those cretters.
– Denis M. Lawlor, LWS Computing
Ms. Rosenberger,
I don’t think that “professional e-mail” is as much defined by what so-called “professionals” practice, but more by how business-like the e-mail is. I’ve seen many e-mails from so-called professionals that are riddled with misspelled words and bad grammar. To me, that’s not a good example of professional e-mail. Professional e-mail would also exclude the “cute” forwards that are almost as bad as spam. That’s not to say it’s totally improper to forward items, but that would fit into the social category rather than professional. E-mail within your organization may be less formal than your standard business letter, but e-mail that represents your company to those outside should be a little more formal. I’d say a professional should adapt his or her e-mail style to be appropriate to the situation, most formal for external business contacts, less formal for internal business contacts, least formal for social contacts. I still think accuracy in spelling and grammar are important in all instances, but the terminology and the amount of levity are subject to change.
As a side note regarding Outlook, I prefer not to use it, partially as a guard against the many various viruses that seem to target Outlook. I use Netscape Mail and it does have a spell check function, although it won’t catch some things. Once you’ve hit “Send” and the spell checker kicks in, you can only change terms that the program suggests are mistakes, so you still need to be in the habit of proofreading your own e-mail. That’s probably not a bad idea for all professional mail, since the majority of errors are typos rather than lack of education.
– Emery V. Swagerty, Seward County Community College
Professional E-mails need to be worded correctly, have proper grammar, & most importantly be spell-checked. Backgrounds can be annoying or they can be positive. Like if someone posts a checked background that drowns out some of your words, that can look terrible. Those are really the main criteria I can think of.
– Josh Thomas, Central Distribution, Inc.
Hi Jackie,
Regarding plain text versus html emails, I have to say that I am impressed with the professional looking html emails that I recieve but wonder just how they are produced, not with good old outlook express thats for sure, any ideas?
– Richard Norman
Note from editor – I believe he was referring to the DevWebPro newsletters, which are created using DreamWeaver and sent using Accucast
I go for plain text, simple messages, everyday.
Your HTML email needs an extra click on my system to make it appear (other users might not realise that you can click on HTML to make it appear “correct”).
Also, your email attempts to send via Outlook on my computer – which I don’t use. Other users might not know how to reply to your emails.
So – the less complication, the more chance the message will arrive AND BE ABLE TO BE REPLIED TO – which is the important bit!
– Pete Clark
Note from editor – we are considering including a link to the online version of every newsletter to remedy this problem
Dear Jackie,
Just my 2 cents worth.
You should write your email just the same as you would a business letter. I find that html helps with a nicer layout, but we have to keep in mind that not everyone uses html when receiving mail.
So in short think about who you are sending the email to and how you would write a business letter to them, and whether they are likely to use html on their email settings.
This should give a professional image every time.
– Russell Deane
Hello,
Having never written in before, I would like to simply point out that there is a significant issue at stake in this discussion. Whereas I am uncertain the exact number of users Microsoft has under the HOTMAIL domain, I know that it must be in the hundreds-of-millions.
My point is, with all of those recipients of business and advertising memos and newsletters, the worst thing a company can do is to not include the actual URL for the link they have provided. I say this because users of HOTMAIL, when clicking a link, experience a new window being opened with a frame at the top that says, “You are visiting a site outside of Hotmail. To return to Hotmail, close this browser window.” and the actual link has been transcribed into something resembling the following (for example):
http://65.54.246.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=59f7f4cdbf74754e9f748a9b5d9c516a&lat=1053691169&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2ethecareernews%2ecom%2ft%2fd%2fph%2d713%2d16 2d2891564M%2ehtml
This function of MSN Hotmail has caused many email recipients to lose out on opportunities for responding to or accessing information from that email document. The most crucial point here is that it is invaluable to have a list of URLs or simply include the URL after the link within the email. This will allow respondees to actually access the information or follow that link to the intended destination. This primarily applies when the link is connecting to a server file that already uses the format that Hotmail converts the link to, thus causing that link to malfunction.
Thank you for your time,
-xoandre
Hello Jackie…
I’ve been reading this newsletter for some time now and although it has been informative, I haven’t been motivated to respond to and of the articles until this particular issue hit my screen…that of HTML newsletters.
You mentioned in your 5/23/03 article that there are two distinct caps on the issue. Well, count me into the one that thinks that HTML e-mail containing graphics and advanced coding belongs in a special level of he!!.
First off, for dial-up users receiving 20-30 HTML laced e-mails a day takes too darn long to download. You increase the file size by a factor of 10 or more, and this is just plain unacceptable.
Second, the potential for abuse soars with HTML. Cookies, redirects, (sometimes without even clicking), and worse are commonplace in commercial HTML e-mail. For this reason I do not display any of my e-mail in HTML format. I won’t use Outlook as a mail client since it is so heavily targeted for viruses. I use Eudora, and have the “Use Microsoft Viewer” option unchecked. As a result, HTML newsletters (including yours) arrive in a horribly distorted fashion with bunches of ugly blue boxes scattered randomly around the pertinent text. While it looks awful, I have grown used to dealing with it, but do you REALLY want your newsletter to be viewed in such a fashion?
Dump the graphics, get rid of those annoying flashing icons, and stick with good design using links, lines (there is an art to dividing a plain text page using simple characters), and quality content. Your readers will appreciate it. Want proof? Read on…
I compose and send out three newsletters for different groups. In the case of one association I do newsletters for (Association of Wedding Professionals), most members also belong to a similar association (National Association of Catering Executives), that also sends out a monthly newsletter, although it is HTML encoded. The members that receive both newsletters are overwhelming in their preference of the plain text over HTML. These are non-technical people who don’t care about bells and whistles…they just want the information served up concisely and in an organized fashion.
Let me close by saying that in order to respond to your request for feedback I had to go into Eudora and change the display back to view HTML so I could see which blue box to click on to find your address. It was impossible to find when viewed in Eudora. Far too much work!
Many of the members of AWP are still using small monitors that make reading formatted text difficult as they can’t change the text size as displayed. I noticed that as I viewed your newsletter in it’s intended state with HTML switched on that it was even difficult for me to read the text as it displayed so small, and that’s on a 19″ monitor. Switching back to plain text display allows me to select the size of the text and makes it much easier to read.
Also, while typing this reply, (with the HTML viewer still activated), a piece of spam slipped through the filters and tried to load a third party application automatically. This is the EXACT reason why HTML should be discouraged. I realize that it’s far too late to do away with it…it’s clearly here to stay, but we DON’T have to view it in such a hostile environment. Therefore, people who insist on sending HTML newsletters will continue to have all of their great design work relegated to a bunch of ugly blue boxes scattered haphazardly around the page.
I can only hope that more people discover the benefits of Eudora, or that Microsoft allows customers the option of reading their e-mail with the HTML functionality turned off.
Keep up the good work…you TEXT content is quite enlightening ;-)!
– Steve Kimbell
Note from editor – again, perhaps a Web link would solve this problem. Murdok emails are currently formatted for mail clients capable of handling HTML mail. The need for another option is clear
Hello Jackie,
I’m Carlos (from Argentina). I work with Exchange/Outlook and MSMail 3.2 since 1993 or 1994 (I’m LAN Administrator) and I’ve seen and heard a lot of users. They said that they don’t care about presentation, they said that the important thing is the content of the message, but presentation is always on their mind, I know. They preffer to send a simple message with no banners or smily faces on it, but they want to set the types bold or italic or underlined, and a lot of things like that wondering how to express themselves in the most clear way.
My thoughts about this matter is that the presentation is very important, as it is in every kind of human communication. A good message, clear and clever is a good thing but if besides it is very well “dressed” it is much better. Well, I appologize because of my English (I speak Spanish here) and I hope you can understand what I mean in this message.
– Carlos Lizzoli
HTML & etc. may make an email look good; however, where I work, we are not supposed to use the HTML feature, but stick with the plain text. Experience has taught our email administrator that not everyone can open them or view them when the HTML feature is selected. Maybe in ten years when all the “OLD” computers are gone to heaven.
– Anita
Jackie,
Professional e-mail is text only, anything with html in it gets auto deleted (usually).
Professional e-mail has a subject line that doesn’t have “buzz words” (filtered out as junk mail).
Professional e-mail does not include graphics or attachments.
– John Wright, Starfire Research
Jackie,
I’m on the side of the plain text/solid content group.
I double space between paragraphs, use proper spelling and grammar (as best I can), and try not to be redundant or trivial. When sending professional messages, I always use the theme format with an introduction paragraph, body/main points and a summary or request for action statement at the end. If the subject is very confusing and complicated, I use the phone.
I also try to follow what Jay Dominick, the CIO here at Wake Forest University, tells us, “Never read more than a page/screen of email and never write more than a page/screen”.
I leave the HTML stuff for advertisements which may, in fact, be what you’re writing about. Most HTML email gets deleted from my inbox, site unseen, which means you got lucky today, it’s a slow email day.
– Art Pittman, WFU Legal Department
Hi Jackie,
A short comment about html verses text web pages.
I think html are great for visual advertisement, however, with all the spam and porn embeds lots of people have blocks on embedded e-mail. I had to drop a logo from my signiture because of blocks. It was a simple .gif animation..a smiley face. I also would love to block incoming embedded e-mails, but unfortunaltely, I can’t as I would be blocking some embeds that I do want. So, for me, it’s a case of “you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. Too bad there isn’t a program that can tell the difference between embedded images!
– Loren
hi Jackie-
thanks for reading this. I’m a first-time reader and feel I should jump in the mix on this discussion:
I’ve just got a quick something about professional email that would be good to mention (and change in your newsletters if you deem it worthy) in your upcoming article that will either help us all or set me apart from the world of developers– I’m a hotmail user. It is not only my primary email client but my only email client (except when I click a mailto: link). I also use it to retrieve POP and subscribe to newsletters like this one. My beef is newsletters that have intriguing story summaries and a “click here for more” link with no URL visible. The reason this irks me is b/c Hotmail has a most annoying “feature” of converting all in-line links (including your mailto: email link on your photo) to something that gets masked by necessarily going thru Hotmail’s machines. Not so bad.. but, in the process, it also opens All links in a frameset with the top window saying:
“You are visiting a site outside of Hotmail. To return to Hotmail, close this browser window.”
Ok, that’s bearable.. but by the time I read a couple articles and get around to clicking into another, I get
“Your email message has been idle and this link has become inactive. To access the link, close this window and return to your MSN Hotmail Message. Then click the browser’s Refresh button or close your message and reopen it. ”
That’s the pits.. I’ve asked MS hotmail staff about it in an email and the canned response was helpful neither to justify the “feature” nor to suggest how to get around it.
So. (wow that was long) If you might please address stuffing the complete url into the email/newsletter itself, maybe even as a list of refs at the bottom with anchor/name links from the body of the document.
– Bronius Motekaitis, http://www.Bronius.com
A profesional email, is one like DevWebPro’s… good content, well arranged with good typeface. Plain text is all very well for simple emails, I don’t much like programs like “IncrediMail”, or the templates in Outlook(Express) for HTML emails… it serves no purpose. But DWP shows what a professional newsletter should look like, using HTML for basic improvements, not going overboard with chaotic background images.
– Ben Vail, Mech Games
Jackie,
I believe that in email as in everything else, it all depends on the audience.
Plain text vs. HTML?
Depends on the audience — and the message.
A tech audience will laugh you off the screen if you send HTML.
A business audience will go either way, especially as broadband gets more widespread. As long as an HTML newsletter doesn’t take forever to download, the increased readership that comes from adding color and decent typography is probably worth the effort and the bandwidth. (Although, personally, I like long newsletters in plain text so I can scroll from the keyboard instead of the mouse.)
Consumer stuff needs the style appeal and product pix you get with HTML. Can you imagine going to Talbots.com for a summer dress based on a text email? Not likely unless you’re already a devoted customer.
Oh — and whether text or HTML, how hard is it to make sure the links in your note actually work?
Mary Baum, Managing Director Herbert+Baum Integrated Marketing
Jackie:
All e-mail, regardless of professional or personal should be readable. When thoughts and subjects are all run together, reading is harder. When separated, it is clear and quick to pick out just what is being conveyed.
I would appreciate any summary or report that you gain from your ‘research’ on this subject.
– Ruth Hammons
As a professional artist, I can tell you that if I get e-mail with grammatical or punctuation errors from companies wanting to sell my work or list me on their site, I won’t even consider them. The worst one is the incorrect use of the apostrophe before and after s. Spell check will not pick it up. A person has to know the rules on it.
– Hope Barton
Hi Jackie,
It would depend on the situation but normally I prefer plain presentation with solid content. Please keep it short and simple. Often when I open an email with a lot of graphics, I hit the delete button before the page is fully loaded. If graphics are necessary to make the point, put them down the page and place some solid content first to get my attention.
– Jack
I usually use plain text, concentrating on content and brevity, and being sure to check spelling, punctuation, and grammar. If a graphic is relevant and enhances the message I would consider adding it. I would only send html mail to those I am sure can view it and want that type of mail.
– Ted Rice
Plain text should be used for diurnal e-mail because its simple fonts encourage simple messages.
It’s difficult to organize a 10 page message without a word processor. And that’s good because office personnel skip over large e-mails anyway.
These e-mails also hog bandwidth and storage on the server system.
Analogous to large e-mails, html messages quickly grow in size because of their tags and multi-media content. These kinds of e-mails should be used sparingly in situations of professional curtesy. Top-level executives would have occasional use for rich content for example.
– Keith
Dear Jackie
You are intimating that people are talking about presentation in answer to your question. I don’t believe that that is critical – and it depends upon the impact that is sought. If the email is “a letter” then HTML is nice and neat but not vital, whereas for a newsletter or advertising, then graphics add enormously to the impact and the reader’s ability to understand – although provision must of course be made for those unable to read HTML.
However, I think that the crucial factors for professional emails are these :
- Spell checking
- Sensible explanatory subject line
- Signature which properly identifies the sender and organisation
- Disclaimer if appropriate
I find that many people diminish their professionalism by not observing these things, whereas in a letter they would not even think of missing them.
– Helga Arlington, Librarian, Auckland District Law Society Library & Research Centre
Hello Jackie
I used to send and receive E-mail in html format now I am a lot more careful since my DUN files were corrupted by a malicious hacker.
I believe a professional user should also consider speed for those who still use modems as well as creating confidence in safe mail. Your own experience of receiving contaminated mail is an example of who you have confidence in.
I also like the regular articles you put in, keep the coming.
Regards Sideways (aka Robert) or should that be the other way around 😉
The only professional email starts with “see attached”, any more information than this is still competing with drawings on a cave wall, in fact hieroglyphics is way beyond html.
(unsigned)
Jackie Rosenberger is an editor with Murdok, Inc.