E-Mail Is Permanent

Each E-Mail you send is more than likely saved or archived on your computer system or on the recipient's system; therefore, do not assume that an E-Mail message no longer exists, even if you delete what you received or sent. Your thoughts and interactions with others, via E-Mail, are archived and saved, potentially for posterity.

In financial services organizations, all data must be saved for a minimum of seven years. Think about what you are writing and what legacy you are leaving through such communications. E-Mail communications can be presented in a court of law.

E-Mail Is Not Free

One of the erroneous assumptions is that E-Mail is free. E-Mail is not by any means free. There are many direct and indirect costs associated within this medium. As mentioned in previous articles, it costs money for an organization to handle an inbound customer E-Mail. However, beyond this there are other costs. Spam or junk e- mail costs money to read, process, store and delete. E-Mail containing viruses has many side effects including loss in productivity and potential destruction of valuable information. Large attachments require additional space. Chain letters, forwarding of jokes and participation in flaming debates via E-Mail add to these costs.

Recognize that every E-Mail interaction has a cost including your time, computer hardware and software costs and IT personnel time to maintain the systems. Be frugal with E-Mail; if you're not paying for it, someone else is.

E-Mail and Humor

E-Mail is a medium where communication is through words. This is just not the best medium to express emotions or use humor. The reason is because they don’t come across very well in an E-Mail. You may use emoticons to get over some of these shortcomings but there’s just no way to express tone, inflection, etc. Further, you will not be able to judge whether the recipient really understands that you are only joking. When you are having a conversation in person and happen to say something that the other person does not really appreciate, you can always say that you were only joking. This may not happen over E-Mail as never get to see the recipient's reaction, unless he or she writes back to say so. In that case, you can try and limit the damage already done.

So, the basic rule would be to avoid humor unless the recipient knows you well well enough to understand that you’re joking. It just is not worth the risk.

E-Mail is Asynchronous

The great element of E-Mail is that you read it when you want to read it. Those who check E-Mail every five minutes are using E-Mail in an undisciplined fashion. Reading and responding to every E-Mail immediately sets false expectations for those who send you E-Mail. It may be valuable to set a time within your E-Mail systems or through policy on when people should use E-Mail, thus establishing some clear disciplines on using E-Mail effectively.