Rules for corporate correspondence. Rules for formatting and conducting business correspondence: examples of phrases

Business correspondence by email is a convenient way of written communication between business entities. You have to write and receive a lot of letters, and speed and correctness of communication is one of the components of a successful company. Some rules of business correspondence.

E-mail has firmly taken its place in business correspondence due to its advantages - availability around the clock, efficiency, and ease of use. In this article we will look at some of the nuances of online business correspondence.

Receiving letters

You should check your mailbox several times during the workday. Otherwise, you may procrastinate on important issues and stall other people's work.
If you receive a letter, then you need to read it, because someone sent it. Naturally, we are not talking about spam here.
If you hold a managerial position, then your working day should begin with checking your email. For convenience, configure your email client to automatically deliver or send mail every 10-20 minutes.
When you're busy and you receive an email, look at who it's from, what the subject line is, and quickly glance at the title to gauge the importance of the email.
Try to respond to emails immediately - this will help you avoid inboxes.

You must use the To, Cc, and Bcc fields correctly.

"To whom". If you send a question or ask for clarification of something, then you expect an answer from the addressee whose data is indicated in the “to” field. When you are the recipient, you need to answer the question. That is, this field indicates the recipient's data.
"Copy". The recipient whose data is indicated in this field are, as it were, “invited eyewitnesses.” In this case, the recipient should not respond to the letter. In addition, if it is necessary to send such a letter, it should begin with the lines “sorry for interrupting”, out of politeness.
"Hidden copy". The main recipient is not aware that the letter was sent to the addressee whose details are indicated in the “blind carbon copy” field. In addition, this field is used when sending mass mail.

When replying, you should not forget about the “reply all” button, this will help you not to miss a single recipient. You can remove unwanted recipients and add new ones at any time.

Subject field. This field must always be filled in. The person to whom the letter is addressed may receive a huge amount of mail per day, and using this field he will be able to assess the degree of importance of the letter. The subject line of the letter should briefly and informatively reflect its content.

"The Importance of Writing." In case the letter contains important or urgent information that needs immediate attention, indicate this by setting the importance to “high”. This will make your email stand out in your inbox. But don't unnecessarily abuse this feature.

How to reply to email

Below we will look at a short guide to writing a response to a letter.

You should always start with a greeting - a tribute to politeness, nothing can be done.
You need to communicate with a person in his language. And this applies not only to linguistics, but also to forms of communication. Informal communication can be regarded as disrespect, and even an attempt to offend the interlocutor.
You should not use transliteration, except when sending a letter from a mobile phone. If your email client does not have the Russian language, send the text of the letter in the application.
A business letter should be consistent, precise and concise. Accuracy means clearly stating the data you are referring to (date, location, time, etc.). Specificity - the recipient of your letter should understand from the very first lines what exactly is required of him. Conciseness. If you think clearly, then you are able to express your thoughts clearly. And your interlocutor will immediately see and appreciate it. Therefore, it is worth avoiding “water” for several pages if you can state the essence of the matter in a few sentences.
When a letter contains several questions, tasks or topics, they need to be structured and separated from each other. A continuous stream of thoughts is difficult to read, and even more difficult to extract important points from it.
Requests made in letters must be answered in as much detail as possible. Answers like “It will be done” are unacceptable.
There should be no errors in the text of the letter. It's okay if one or two minor typos creep in. But if you suffer from chronic illiteracy from letter to letter, then the interlocutor will not have the best impression of you.
Always proofread your letters! Read the letter several times and make sure that you haven’t missed anything, check it for errors, whether the recipient’s information is correct, etc., etc.

Writing letters to family and friends is significantly different from letters in the business world. A well-designed letter allows the interlocutor to form a correct idea of the reputation and image of the company that sends it, and also largely affects the desire for further cooperation.

Using email

The development of Internet technologies has greatly simplified work with clients and counterparties of companies - business partners, suppliers, wholesale customers.

Every company now has an electronic mailbox and allows you to almost instantly send commercial proposals, reports to partners and higher authorities, applications and contracts.

The benefits of email include the following:

fast delivery of messages, which greatly speeds up the process of transactions and transactions;
low cost. Compared to regular mail or courier delivery, email costs much less. When sending, you can use services that can be absolutely free and will allow you to send thousands of letters daily;
reduction of management levels in the company - any employee of the company can directly contact the manager with a proposal for any ideas. Email thus stimulates innovation and allows organizations to grow faster. But in this case, it is necessary to ensure that e-mail does not turn into a kind of “book of complaints”, when employees will write letters to the head of the company for any reason, distracting him with really important issues;
ability to transfer large amounts of data. All email services have cloud services that support the storage and use of large amounts of data that are easily and seamlessly transferred from one email address to another;
secure data transfer and the ability to backup information. Faxes or regular mail are more vulnerable;
the possibility of a faster response to customer needs - e-mail allows you to quickly respond to complaints or suggestions from consumers.

However, this type of communication also has its disadvantages. First of all, this may be due to the incompetence of the specialists sending out letters and, as a result, a violation of coordination between the company and its clients. Knowledge of the basics of business communication ethics is a basic requirement for those individuals who are responsible for mailings in an organization.

Rules and etiquette for formal email correspondence

Communication with friends and acquaintances by e-mail is very different from business letters, where slang, first-name usage, and the use of abbreviations are unacceptable (unless these are generally accepted and widely used abbreviations). The reputation of the company, customer loyalty to it and its general image in the market in which it operates depend on how competently and professionally the letter is written.

Let's consider the basic rules that will allow you to create high-quality letters that comply with business ethics:

You should always indicate the subject of the letter, which would correspond to its main content. For example, if this is an invitation to a banquet for partners, then the subject line of the letter should read “Invitation for the manager” (or indicate his name and patronymic). It is important to understand that organizations receive a large number of letters, and if you indicate in the subject line of the letter for whom it is intended, it will be easier for the secretary of the organization to transfer it;
When replying to a letter, it is imperative to save the history of previous correspondence - this way the recipient will be able, if necessary, to re-read those messages that were sent earlier. Since quite a lot of letters come and go in a business environment, it is difficult to keep in mind all the information from partners, so such a response to a letter will allow you to refresh your memory of what was discussed;
addressing “You” is the main rule of business correspondence, as is the fact that any letter should begin with a greeting and end with the phrase “With respect, full name, position”;
the response should be as prompt as possible, since this directly affects the company's reputation. In the business world, it is customary to respond to letters within a few hours and not to delay the response for more than one day.

How to conduct business email correspondence with clients

Business correspondence is an entire art that is learned over the years, and only with experience in communicating with partners is a certain style of writing messages developed.

Separately, the content of the letters should be noted: it should not go beyond the scope of the message and should be concise. There is no need to lead to the main question for a long time; it is better to immediately identify the problem that causes the need to write a letter.

Clients should be aware of what is happening in the company, but you should not abuse their time and send frequent mailings - this can easily fall into the category of spam and cause distrust on the part of clients. Regular mailings can be carried out on such occasions as: reminders about the company, its promotions and special offers, the launch of new products, changes in the organization’s coordinates (location, telephone, mail).

Ethics in emailing partners

overuse exclamation or question marks;
excessive use of different colors and fonts, as well as capital letters;
insert emoticons or other funny pictures into letters.

The letter must be literate, both from a spelling and punctuation point of view.

Examples of business correspondence by email

Below are examples of well-written letters sent by email:

Hello, Ivan Ivanovich. In response to your request, we will send you our commercial offer as an attachment. For any questions, you can contact the product manager: 500-50-50 (Peter);
Good afternoon, Pyotr Petrovich. The Ivanov and Partners company is pleased to inform you that we are now located in the very center of the city - in a new modern office located at Sidorova Street, building 5, office 100. Sincerely, Ivanov I.I., head of the company.

Collect contacts and addresses of business people at Expocentre exhibitions

One of the effective methods of collecting contacts and addresses of future business partners is visiting exhibitions at the Expocentre Fairgrounds. Before carrying out this work, you need to stock up on a large number of your own business cards so that you can exchange them when meeting businessmen. It is important not just to hand out and receive business cards in return, but also to develop your own questionnaire, which will better give you a general idea of the enterprise or company that the exhibition participant represents. The questionnaire should contain contact information, information about the company profile, key points on supplies and purchases, and reflect the role of the company representative in the organization.

The list of participants and the layout of the exposition can be viewed on the exhibition website. It is better to collect contacts not only from participants, but also from visitors to the exhibition, because Almost all visitors are in one way or another connected with the theme of the event.

Conducting correspondence by email is an integral part of the daily business practice of a modern secretary. The ability to persuade while remaining polite and correct are skills that need to be developed and honed. A poorly written and illiterate letter can put an end to your career and irrevocably damage your business reputation. In this article you will find a set of simple and effective rules for conducting business correspondence by email that will help you prove your professionalism and successfully achieve your goals.

From the article you will learn:

Business correspondence by email: rules and examples

Rule 1:

work email is used only for official correspondence

This remark applies not so much to business letter etiquette, how much to business ethics and preserving your reputation. Always remember that all letters that you send from your work computer are saved on the server, and your manager can review them if desired.

Rule 2:

The rule is to determine the circle of recipients of your message

If you are writing a letter to a manager, then there should be one addressee - the manager; if you are writing to colleagues or subordinates, then there may be several addressees. They are entered separated by commas in the “To” field, all interested parties - in the “Copy” field. These may be third parties mentioned in the text of the message. Try not to send unnecessary copies, especially to management. Subservience and the desire to please will not decorate you. Having “hidden copies” of the letter will do you even worse. You will be known as an intriguer.

Rule 3:

the purpose of the letter should be transparent to both you and the addressee

Clearly formulate the purpose of your message: what actions do you expect the reader of the message to take? What reaction should follow? This goal should be transparent not only to you, but also to the recipient.

The purpose of the message will determine the form and grammar of the narrative:

expressing your opinion and your assessment of the situation involves the use of 1 person (“I” and “we”);
a request, an instruction, a call to action involves the use of 2 persons (“you” and “you”);
reporting events from the point of view of an outside observer involves the use of the third person (“he” or “they”).

Rule 4:

do not leave the “subject” field empty

Most users begin their acquaintance with by email from studying the “topic” field. Sometimes this is where it ends. To prevent your message from being deleted before being read, strive to keep the topic as specific, informative and brief as possible. Vague topics like “Request for information”, “from Moscow”, “revised version” are not acceptable. Examples of successful topics:

“List of team members for the Mathematics Olympiad in Moscow”

“List of faulty equipment of the eighth workshop dated 06/01/17”

"Projection Equipment Market Research 2017"

If you are replying to a message, the “Re” symbol will appear in the “subject” field; it is recommended to delete it.

Rule 5:

stick to traditional message structure

The structure of the letter is simple and clear, but each element in it is required:

Greetings and address;
Main unit;
Summary block;
Signature
Contact Information.

Rule 6:

greeting and address are the key to mutual understanding

Never use the expression “Good day” as a greeting. This is bad form. Use universal “Hello!” or “Good afternoon!” An official letter can begin immediately with the address “Dear (first and patronymic)” or “Dear Mr. (last name).” Which option is preferable - first name, patronymic or last name? The rule here is this: if you are just establishing contact and writing a message to the addressee for the first time, then it is appropriate to address him by his last name; when contact has been established and you are writing a message for the second time, address him by his first name and patronymic.

If the message has several addressees, then a suitable option would be “Dear Sirs” or “Dear Colleagues” if you are addressing representatives of a profession close to you. At the end of the address, you can put an exclamation mark or a comma, and start the text itself from a new paragraph, with a lowercase letter. Which option should I choose? In an official letter or message to which you attach great importance, put an exclamation point, and in a simple work message, put a comma.

Rule 7:

brevity is the main advantage of electronic correspondence

“Maximum meaning – minimum words” is the golden motto of business correspondence.

The statement of thoughts should be:

specific;
consistent;
concise;
understandable.

Write in short sentences – it’s easier for you and easier for the recipient to understand. Break your text into paragraphs so it's easier to skim and find the information you need.

Another tip: one topic - one message. If you want to consider several unrelated issues, cover several different ideas, then devote a separate text to each topic. Of course, the “Topic” field should contain this idea or question in a short form.

In case of long-term correspondence, you can limit yourself to the words “With respect” and your first and last name.

Rule 14:

try not to use postscript

The use of a postscript is permissible in one case - if at the time of writing the letter some important event occurred that is directly related to the addressee.

Example: P.S. The plane tickets were delivered an hour ago.

Rule 15:

use read receipts as intended

The purpose of this notification is that the recipient is expected to perform some action. It is used only for external recipients.

Rule 16:

Don't overuse the "high importance" flag

Remember Leo Tolstoy's parable about a boy who loved to jokingly shout “Wolves!”? Everyone was so accustomed to his jokes that when the wolves actually attacked him, no one reacted to his screams.
When you need to really indicate the importance of the letter, all the necessary flags will already be used.

Rule 17:

double-check all data, numbers and names

Make it a rule - be sure to re-read it again before sending it. letter, check all the numbers, clarify last names and initials. One small mistake could cost you your place.

Rule 18:

reply to the letter immediately

If for some reason you cannot answer immediately - for example, you do not have all the information or are simply not ready, simply write that the letter has been received and you will respond later. Otherwise, the recipient will not be sure that the letter was received or was not deleted by mistake.

Success in the activities of any organization, commercial firm or enterprise is inextricably linked with culture of behavior and etiquette. All actions of the manager and employees must certainly take into account the rules of good manners and be appropriate to the situation.

One of the most important parts of etiquette is business correspondence.

It is estimated that almost 50% of the time at work is spent dealing with papers and mail. But this is necessary, since competent business correspondence can significantly increase a company’s turnover and speed up the interaction of different services and departments.

Of course, there are certain patterns here, and we will definitely talk about them in this article. The rules of business correspondence have long been standardized. The existing GOST R.6.30-2003 will help you correctly place the text on the sheet, tell you what indents, margins, and fonts to make. Business correspondence is characterized by uniformity and repetition of speech patterns.

However, any letter is individual. A big imprint on it is left by the identity of the sender, his position, situation and recipient. To some extent, business correspondence is a combination of creativity and hard work.

Types of business correspondence

Document circulation is carried out on paper and via e-mail.

All correspondence at the enterprise can be divided into the following groups:

Official/informal correspondence;

Internal and external.

Official correspondence includes commercial offers, letters of gratitude and guarantees, trade agreements, orders for the enterprise, job responsibilities, requests, demands, claims.

Informal correspondence includes various congratulations from business partners, customers, and employees; condolences, apologies, invitations and thanks.

Internal documents circulate only between departments of one enterprise, while external documents go beyond its boundaries.

Rules of business correspondence: internal content

The main requirement is brevity and clarity of the letter. Do not stretch the text over several pages. The best option is to fit into one.

The rules of business correspondence involve the exclusion of complex, incomprehensible, foreign and highly specialized words and expressions from the text. All sentences should be short, with the main thoughts of the author and without “water”.

Avoid double interpretations in your letter, otherwise if disputes arise, it will be more difficult to defend your point of view and prove what you meant by a certain phrase.

The rules for writing business correspondence oblige the writer to call the recipient by name and patronymic, preceded by the title “Dear...”. And be sure to use “you,” even if you have a good friendly relationship with the recipient of the letter.

In the introduction, in addition to indicating the last name and first name, the main purpose of the message is stated. Examples of business correspondence know enough templates and cliches for such cases: “In connection with the previous letter...”, “We remind you...”, “Let us inform...” and others.

Soften an answer unfavorable for the recipient (refusal of an offer, refusal of cooperation) with the phrases: “Unfortunately, we will not be able to take advantage of the proposed conditions...” or similar.

External paper documentation

Any business letter must be written on company letterhead with company details and all contact information.

Be sure to include the exact date of the document.

The upper right corner of the sheet is occupied by the initials of the addressee and the address of the recipient company.

Break the text into meaningful paragraphs to make it easier for the reader to understand and perceive it. No more than 4-5 lines.

Writing all words in capital letters is bad form.

Documents may be attached to the letter. In this case, they are listed in a separate line in the lower left part of the sheet. According to business etiquette, a response to a letter must be received within 10 days. If the problem requires more time to resolve, the addressee must notify this.

After writing, you should be sure to carefully check the text again for errors, both spelling and grammar. If you have time, you should put the letter aside and return to it again later. As a rule, inaccuracies will be discovered that were not noticed at first. This advice is most important when responding to a customer complaint. You shouldn’t irritate a person even more with an illiterately written letter.

When the document is written and checked a couple of times, print it on A4 paper. This size is the standard size used for any correspondence, even if the text itself only takes up half a sheet.

Test the ink in the printer before printing to avoid blurry or sloppy output.

In some cases, you can attach your business card to the document, and enclose the printed sheet itself in a transparent file.

A branded envelope with the company logo is also considered good form.

The rules for conducting informal business correspondence are often more emotional than in business papers and less clichéd. Abbreviations and the use of colorful adjectives are appropriate here, for example, in congratulations: amazing, responsive, kind.

Business emails

The fact that you are not sending correspondence in an envelope through the postal network should not be relaxing. The rules of business correspondence also apply in these cases.

Competent and correct electronic business messages create a positive image of both the enterprise and a specific person. Reputation in business is worth a lot!

Basic rules for correspondence by e-mail

Use your work email address only for its intended purpose.

Pay attention to the name of the mailbox. Do not use incorrect names when working, such as “baby”, “superman”, even if they are indicated in English transcription.

Always fill in the “subject” column, otherwise your letter may end up in spam. Descriptions like “plan”, “list”, “commercial proposal”, “report” are not suitable. There may be quite a lot of similar letters in your recipient's inbox. Be as specific as possible about what your message is about. Don't use more than five words. Capitalize your subject. There is no need to put a period at the end.

If you are replying to a previously received email, be sure to remove the “Re” in the subject line.

Communication style

Keep the letter in a businesslike format. Remove the threatening, pleading, commanding tone.

The rules of electronic business correspondence do not allow the use of emoticons or a large number of question marks or exclamation marks in the text.

Be polite. A mandatory greeting at the beginning and farewell to the interlocutor at the end is good form. For example, “With respect...” or like this: “Sincerely yours...”.

Business email correspondence and its “golden rule”: do not mix several different topics in one message. It's better to send a series of letters.

An email should be half as long as a paper letter.

Working with attachments

If there is too much information to convey, do not put it all in the body of the letter, but attach it as separate documents as attachments.

For the convenience of the recipient, rename the documents you prepared to names that he understands. This will show your interest and win you over. Think about how many work folders the recipient has on his computer and how he will search for your letter among them.

Be sure to inform the recipient about the files you are sending so that he does not consider them a random virus. Archive large documents.

It is best to send too large attachments (over 200 kbytes) in other ways, for example, through an ftp server.

Some mail servers do not allow formats such as COM, EXE, CMD, PIF and a number of others to pass through and block them.

If there were several recipients of your letter, take the time to delete all evidence of mass forwarding each time. The addressee does not need such extra information at all. The “bcc” command will help you.

The rules for conducting business correspondence by e-mail require informing the other party that the correspondence has been received. If it is not possible to answer at the moment, notify your interlocutor about this. Save your correspondence history to avoid further questions and proceedings.

If the response is important and urgent, it is allowed to additionally notify the addressee by phone, Skype or ICQ. If even after this you were unable to achieve a positive result, remind yourself again.

It is not uncommon that when you request a document, you receive an empty letter with an attached file in response. It is unacceptable. Examples of business correspondence require that relevant information be placed in the body of the document. For example, this: “I am sending the necessary data for your request.”

Don’t forget to indicate the coordinates at the end of the letter: all available methods of communication, position, company website, links to social networks.

When writing organization contacts, provide as much information as possible - telephone number with area code, address with zip code. After all, your communication occurs not only with residents of your region. If you have all the information, it will be easier to contact you.

And the last rule: whoever started the correspondence must finish the electronic dialogue.

Conclusion

Business correspondence is a delicate matter. Sometimes one glance is enough to form a definite opinion about a person and the organization he represents. Knowing the rules of business writing can greatly help your career.

What is email? In the modern business world this is:

Your face. It is with the help of email that you can create a positive image in the eyes of the counterparty or spoil the first impression.
Your working tool. A lot of communication with the outside world takes place via email. Therefore, if you are proficient in this instrument, you can make your life a lot easier.
A powerful distraction. The outside world is trying to get at you, distract you and lead you astray through email.

From this perspective, let’s look at working with email. Let's start with something simple.

Formatting a letter

I use the Mozilla Thunderbird email client, so I will use it as an example. Let's create a new letter and go from top to bottom through the list of fields.

To whom. Copy. Hidden copy

Some may not know, but "To" in Mozilla can be changed to "Cc" or "Bcc".

To whom: we write the main recipient or several recipients separated by semicolons.
Copy: we write to someone who should read the letter, but from whom we do not expect a reaction.
Hidden copy: we are writing to someone who should read the letter, but should remain unknown to the other recipients of the letter. It is especially appropriate to use for mass mailing of business letters, such as notifications.

Wrong in mass mailings, indicate recipients using the “Copy” or “To” fields. Several times a year I receive letters that list 50–90 recipients in the “Cc” field. There is a violation of privacy. Not all of your recipients need to know who else you are working with on a similar topic. It’s good if these are people who know each other. What if there are competing companies on the list that don’t know about each other? At a minimum, you need to be prepared for unnecessary explanations, and at maximum, to terminate cooperation with one of them. Do not do it this way.

Letter subject

Professional mailing services often write (sometimes sensibly) about the importance of the email subject line on their corporate blogs. But most often we are talking about sales letters, where the subject of the letter solves the problem “the email should be opened.”

We are discussing daily business correspondence. Here the theme solves the problem “the letter and its author should be easily identified and then found.” Moreover, your diligence will return to you in the form of karma of numerous response letters, only with prefixes Re: or Fwd, among which you will have to look for the desired letter on the topic.

Twenty letters is the volume of one-day correspondence for a middle manager. I’m not talking about entrepreneurs and business owners at all; their number of letters sometimes goes off scale at 200 or more per day. Therefore once again: do not send emails with an empty subject.

So, how to formulate the subject line of an email correctly?

Mistake #1 : Only the company name in the subject. For example, “Sky” and that’s it. Firstly, you are probably not the only one from your company communicating with this counterparty. Secondly, such a topic does not bring any meaning, because the name of your company is already visible from the address. Thirdly, guess what your own mailbox will look like with this approach to correspondence? Something like this.

Is it convenient to search on such topics?

Mistake #2 : flashy, selling headline. It's great if you know how to write such headlines. But is it appropriate to use these skills in business correspondence? Remember the purpose of a business email subject line: not to sell, but to provide identification and search.

Text of the letter

There are many writing guides for different occasions. For example, Maxim Ilyakhov, Alexander Amzin and other masters of words have a lot of useful information. I advise you to read their articles, at least to improve general literacy and improve the overall style of written speech.

In the process of writing a letter, we must make several decisions sequentially.

A matter of politeness . At the beginning of the letter, you can blur into pleasantries or even tenderness in the spirit of “My dear Rodya, it’s been more than two months since I talked to you in writing, from which I myself suffered and even didn’t sleep some nights, thinking.” Very polite and very costly, both in terms of time to write such an introduction, and in terms of the interlocutor’s time to read it. Correspondence is business, remember? Not an essay in the epistolary genre for a competition or a letter to Raskolnikov’s mother, but business correspondence.

We respect our time and the recipient's!

It only makes sense to introduce yourself and recall the circumstances of your acquaintance in the first letter sent after a fleeting meeting at an exhibition. If this is a continuation of cooperation or ongoing correspondence, in the first letter of the day we write: “Hello, Ivan”, in the second and subsequent ones: “Ivan, ...”.

Appeal . I have always been concerned about the question of who to address in a letter if there are several recipients. Recently I wrote a letter addressed to three girls named Anna. Without any doubt, I wrote “Hello, Anna” and didn’t worry. But such luck is not always the case.

What if there are three or even seven recipients and they do not have the same name? You can list them by name: “Good afternoon, Rodion, Pulcheria, Avdotya and Pyotr Petrovich.” But it's long and takes time. You can write: “Hello, colleagues!”

For myself, I use the rule of addressing by name the person in the “To” field. And don’t contact those in the copy at all. This rule also allows you to more accurately determine (one!) the addressee of the letter and the purpose of this letter.

Citation . Often correspondence is a chain of letters with questions and answers - in a word, a dialogue. It is considered good practice not to delete the correspondence history and write your response at the top of the quoted text, so that when you return to this correspondence a week later, you can easily read the dialogue from top to bottom, descending by date.

For some reason, the default setting in Mozilla is “Place cursor after quoted text.” I recommend changing it in the “Tools” → “Account Options” → “Composing and Addressing” menu. It must be so.

Purpose of the letter . There are two types of business letters:

when we simply inform the interlocutor (for example, a report on the work done for the month);
and when we want something from the interlocutor. For example, so that he approves the attached invoice for payment.

As a rule, there are many times more encouraging letters than reporting letters. If we want to achieve something from the interlocutor, it is very important to say this in a letter in plain text. The call to action should be accompanied by a name and be the last sentence in the letter.

Wrong : “Porfiry Petrovich, I know who hacked the old woman to death.”

Right : “Porfiry Petrovich, it was I who hacked the old woman to death, please take measures to arrest me, I’m tired of suffering!”

Why should the correspondent think for you what to do with this letter? After all, he may make the wrong decision.

Signature in the text . She must be. Moreover, all email clients allow you to configure automatic signature substitution, for example the classic “Sincerely, …”. In Mozilla, this is done in the “Tools” → “Account Options” menu.

Whether or not to write contacts in the signature is a personal matter for everyone. But if you are in any way connected with sales, be sure to write. Even if the deal does not take place as a result of communication, in the future you will be easily found using the contacts from the signature.

Finally, one more feature of the letter body for those interlocutors who don’t like (can’t, don’t want, don’t have time) to answer your letters. Please indicate the default in the body of the letter. For example, “Porfiry Petrovich, if you don’t come to arrest me before 12:00 Friday, then I consider myself amnestied.” Of course, the deadline must be real (you shouldn’t send the text from the example on Friday at 11:50). The recipient must be physically able to read and act on your letter. Such “silence” relieves you of responsibility for the interlocutor’s failure to respond. As always, you need to approach the use of this feature wisely. If a person responds to your letters on time and regularly, such an ultimatum may, if not offend him, then stress him out a little or lead to a decision not to answer the letter right now, but make you wait until Friday.

Attachments

Letters often come with attachments: resumes, commercial proposals, estimates, schedules, scans of documents - a very convenient tool and at the same time a source of popular errors.

Error : huge investment size. I often receive emails with attachments up to 20 MB in size. As a rule, these are scans of some documents in TIFF format, with a resolution of 600dpi. The correspondent's email program will almost certainly freeze for several minutes in a futile attempt to load a preview of the attachment. And God forbid the recipient tries to read this letter on a smartphone...

Personally, I immediately delete such letters. Don't want your email to end up in the trash before it's read? Check the size of the investment. It is recommended that it be no more than 3 MB.

What to do if it exceeds?

Try reconfiguring your scanner to a different format and resolution. For example, PDF and 300dpi produce quite readable scans.
Think about programs such as WinRar or 7zip archiver. Some files compress perfectly.
What to do if the attachment is huge and you can’t compress it? For example, an almost empty accounting database weighs 900 MB. Cloud information storage will come to the rescue: Dropbox, Google Drive and the like. Some services, such as Mail.ru, automatically convert huge attachments into links to cloud storage. But I prefer to manage my information stored in the cloud myself, so I don’t welcome automation from Mail.ru.

And one more not entirely obvious recommendation about investments - their Name . It must be understandable and acceptable to the recipient. Once we in the company were preparing a commercial proposal in the name of... let it be Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. I received a letter from the manager with a draft CP for approval, and the attachment included a file named “ForFedi.docx”. The manager who sent this to me had a dialogue that went something like this:

Dear manager, are you personally ready to approach this respected man and call him Fedya to his face?

Somehow, no, he’s a respected man, everyone calls him by his first name and patronymic.

Why did you name the attachment “For Fedi”? If I send it to him right now, do you think he will buy axes from us using this CP?

I was going to rename it later...

Why prepare a time bomb - the refusal of a potential client - or create extra work for yourself by renaming the file? Why not immediately name the attachment correctly: “For Fyodor Mikhailovich.docx” or even better - “KP_Sky_Axes.docx”.

So, we have more or less sorted out email as a “person”. Let's move on to looking at email as a tool for effective work and talk about its distraction component.

Working with letters

Email is a powerful distraction. As with any distraction, email needs to be dealt with by tightening rules and introducing work schedules.

At a minimum, you need to turn off ALL notifications about mail arrivals. If the email client is configured by default, you will be notified with a sound signal, an icon next to the clock will blink, and a preview of the letter will be shown. In a word, they will do everything to first tear you away from painstaking work, and then plunge you into the abyss of unread letters and unviewed mailings - minus an hour or two from your life.

Some people have powerful willpower that allows them not to be distracted by notifications, but ordinary people are better off not tempting fate and turning them off. In Mozilla Thunderbird, this is done through the menu "Tools" → "Settings" → "General" → "When new messages appear."

If there are no notifications, how can you understand that a letter has arrived?

Very simple. You yourself, consciously, set aside time to sort through your mail, open your email client and see all the unread messages. This can be done twice a day, for example, at lunch and in the evening, or during forced downtime, for example, in traffic jams.

People often ask, what about response times and urgent letters? I answer: you do not have urgent letters in your mail. Unless you work in the customer support department (this department has its own rules for working with mail).

If there are urgent letters, the sender will notify you about this through other channels - telephone, SMS, Skype. Then you will consciously go into your email client and process urgent mail. All time management gurus (for example, Gleb Arkhangelsky with his “Time Drive”) declare a standard response to email within 24 hours. This is a normal rule of good manners - not to expect instant replies via email from your interlocutor. If there is an urgent letter, notify about it through faster communication channels.

So, we turned off notifications and now turn on the email client according to our schedule.

What to do when we go to the mail and engage in an activity called “sorting out email”? Where is the beginning and end of this work?

I have heard a lot about the zero inbox system, but, unfortunately, I have not met a single person using it. I had to reinvent my wheel. There are articles on this topic on Lifehacker. For example, " ". Below I will talk about the zero inbox system in my interpretation. I would be grateful if GTD gurus would comment and add or improve the described system.

It is important to understand and accept that email is not a task scheduler or archive for your activities. Therefore, the Inbox folder should always be empty. Once you start sorting through your inbox, don't stop or be distracted by anything until you've emptied this folder.

What to do with emails in your inbox? You need to go through each letter sequentially and delete it. Yes, just highlight and press Delete on your keyboard. If you can’t bring yourself to delete the letter, you’ll have to decide what to do with it.

Can you answer it in three minutes? Do I need to answer it? Yes, it is necessary, and the answer will take no more than three minutes, then answer immediately.
You must answer, but preparing an answer will take more than three minutes. If you use a task scheduler that allows you to convert an email into a task, turn the email into a task and forget about it for a while. For example, I use the absolutely wonderful service Doit.im. It allows you to generate a personal email address: you forward the letter to it, and it turns into a task. But if you don’t have a task scheduler, move the letter to the “0_Run” subfolder.
After quickly replying to a letter, turning it into a task, or simply reading it, you need to decide what to do with this message next: delete it or send it to one of the folders for long-term storage.

Here are the long-term storage folders I have.

0_Execute. I don’t have such a folder, but if you don’t have a planner, I repeat, you can put letters that require detailed work here. This folder also needs to be cleaned regularly, but with a thoughtful approach at a time specially allocated for this.
1_Ref. Here I put letters with background information: welcome letters with logins from various web services, tickets for upcoming flights, and so on.
2_Projects. An archive of correspondence on partners and projects with which there are current relationships is stored here. Naturally, a separate folder has been created for each project or partner. In the partner’s folder I put letters not only from his employees, but also letters from Neb employees related to this partner. Very convenient: if necessary, all correspondence on the project is at hand in a couple of clicks.
3_Museum. This is where I put those letters that it would be a pity to delete, and the benefit of them is not obvious. Folders with closed projects from “2_Projects” are also moved here. In short, the “Museum” stores the first candidates for removal.
4_Documents. Here are letters with electronic samples of documents that may be useful in the future for accounting, for example, reconciliation reports from clients, tickets for trips taken. The folder has many similarities with the “2_Projects” and “1_Reference” folders, only accounting information is stored in it, and management information is stored in the “2_Projects” folder. In “4_Documents” there is dead information, and in “2_Projects” there is live information.
5_Knowledge. Here I only put really useful newsletters that I want to return to after a while for inspiration or to find solutions.

There are other email client settings that are important for the operation of this system. First, by default in Thunderbird there is a “Mark messages as read” checkbox. I prefer to do this consciously, so down with the flag! To do this, go to the menu “Tools” → “Settings” → “Advanced” → “Reading and Display”.

Secondly, we use filters . Previously, I actively used filters that automatically forwarded letters to the appropriate folders based on the sender's address. For example, letters from a lawyer were moved to the “Lawyer” folder. I abandoned this approach for several reasons. First: letters from a lawyer in 99% of cases relate to some project or partner, which means they must be moved to the folder of this partner or project. Second: I decided to add awareness. You yourself must decide where a specific letter should be stored, and it is more convenient to look for unprocessed messages in only one place - in the inbox. Now I use filters only for organizing automatic regular letters from various systems into folders, that is, letters that do not require me to make decisions. Filters in Mozilla Thunderbird are configured in the menu “Tools” → “Message Filters”.

So, with the right approach, email should take from 10 to 60 minutes a day, depending on the volume of correspondence.

Yes, and one more thing. Have you already turned off notifications about the arrival of new letters? ;)