The art and Technology of e-mail communication

I've been working on a number of emails and resumes every day because of my work. Many excellent student resumes are really beautiful, informative, past performance commendable, but the highlights of the resume can not obscure his/her e-mail ugly "appearance." If you are a member of the "Appearance" Association to process this message, the most likely action is "bulk read" or even "marked as spam."

What does the "appearance" of an e-mail include? What kind of appearance will make a person's eyes bright, let people have the interest to continue reading? Let me step through the normal process of writing an email to talk about some of my experiences.

Sender (from)

Many people will ignore this detail, especially for those who use Web mail to send e-mails, and may not be aware of this field. For example, many people use QQ mailbox to send mail, QQ mailbox will default to use your QQ nickname as the sender's name. So, some people have a cup. From a teacher's point of view, if I received a resume, the sender is written by the Ox <[email Protected]>, I will certainly "despise" the sender of a point, not professional.

Recipient (To)

The recipient must be designated by the sender, if not clear the recipient's full, accurate name, directly fill in the other person's email address the most secure. If you do not want to give the recipient's e-mail address "hat", remember not to "pigtailed", no one will like their name by others to write it?

CC (CC)

If your email needs to be read by more than one person, but not everyone needs to actually deal with the things that are mentioned in this email, you just need to "tell" the other recipients: "I have a voucher for this email communication with the recipient and need you to know the existence of the matter." This is the meaning of the CC object's existence. There is an unwritten rule in the workplace that the importance of the CC object determines how important the message is. Just think, if you send the email to our beloved President Hu, then the importance of this email is self-evident?

Secret Send (BCC)

The only difference between BCC and CC is that the sent email address is not "perceived" by the recipient. The probability of use compared to CC is much smaller.

Theme (Subject)

The first thing to realize is that the subject must not be left blank, "No subject" mail is random performance. Superiors to the subordinate "no subject" mail, will not have any impact. But if you are asking for something, "no theme" will only make the recipient feel despised.

Again, the essence of the theme is "precise, summary", causing the recipient's attention. The most taboo here is the use of flashy themes, such as the use of a large number of special symbols stacked, it seems that the intention is to attract the attention of the recipient, but actually let life boring.

If the recipient has a requirement for the format of the subject, be sure to follow it strictly. Because the recipient is likely to use a message filtering rule on the client that handles the message, the message is automatically categorized. A topic that does not meet the formatting requirements is ignored by the recipient "automatically".

Body

I personally to the message body writing of the biggest experience can be summed up as 12 words: Polite has a section, clear, prominent focus.

Polite: For the first time to send an email or formal mail, must be in the beginning of the mail courtesy, "Hello/hello/You good" there is always a suitable for you, but do not "you good", grammatical errors, read more awkward. Polite greeting, after entering the text, to ensure that the length of moderation. The higher the recipient level, the greater the importance of the message, the more the text content should be short. Only love letters are as long as possible, and the shorter the official mail the better. Of course, the premise must be to clarify the matter. After writing the text, you can use it as appropriate "good luck!" "," to the ceremony! "Expressions of gratitude and good wishes are also implemented through the full text of politeness."

well-organized : The best way to make your message short and concise is to use a list of methods, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... One thing, a piece. Each one has a short headline, and it works better. Look at e-mails, not novels. e-mail content can not be as dramatic as the story of the novel, twists and turns. Another important benefit of List-type mail is that it is easy for recipients to respond to each other.

Focus on : Although the shorter the better, but sometimes it really needs more space to do things, then how to do? My advice is that you can use formatting, bold, color, highlight backgrounds, and so on, are optional and prominent emphasis of the formal method. The only thing to note here is that the emphasis cannot be "watercolor", and the moderation principle must be strictly enforced.

Signature

Before the advent of Gmail, many of the free mailboxes in the country like to send your email automatically plus a "mailbox signature." If only the purely promotion of the mailbox is just, if it is a "STD treatment" advertising it? That might be the "market value" of a paid mailbox.

OK, now the mainstream free mailbox will not hit your e-mail signature idea, your e-mail signature finally you can make your own decisions, write what? My advice is: name, Unit, contact (mobile phone) is the most meaningful signature content, bilingual, formatted signature can add a bit more "professional sense" to your mail.

Attachment

Size, format, and file naming are the three elements of an attachment. Although now mainstream free mailbox attachment size is getting bigger, even there are individual mail service provider's G-level attachment "gimmick", but in the real formal mail communication occasions, the mail attachment size within 5MB is relatively safe transmission standard, if it is a resume and other accessories is better than 100KB. If you want to insert a picture in Word, be sure to compress the picture first, and don't assume that resizing a piece in Word is OK.

The versatility of the format is the attachment that needs to be considered, as much as possible with the popular attachment format when the recipient's message processing terminal configuration is not known. For example, can use zip without rar, can use a PDF without doc, can use TXT without doc, and so on.

File naming is also well-documented and can be referenced in the "Topics" section of this article. "New document. doc" will be naked despised.

Auto Reply

Some people like to set up an automatic email response, which seems to be intended to make people feel diligent. But what if you put an automatic email reply that should have been given to your loved one, and your boss has received your "affectionate" email reply?

If you want to use mail Auto-reply, my suggestion is to use the filter, according to the Mail rules of the targeted automatic reply. The second recommendation is to use a more general automatic reply and identify the message as "Auto-reply" In the header of the message. For example, such an automatic reply to the message body will not give you trouble: The letter you sent has been received, after reading I will promptly reply. Thank you very much!

Reverse Case

1. Send Extra Large attachments
Classmate A to their own undergraduate transcripts scanned original (BMP format, 8MB) tried to send mail to my mailbox. I understand this classmate's "honest" intention, but from the reliable transmission point of view of the mail system, it is very unwise to do so. At the very least, my school mailbox has a "delayed" receipt for this "big accessory" message (10 days before and after the date of the shipment and the date it was actually received!) Operation

2. An inexplicable e-mail personality signature
Classmate B used a beautiful avatar as her own mail personality signature. It's common to use a personalized signature in a message, but it's important to make sure that you send a message with a signature that you want to deliver, and whether it's related to your email correspondence.

3. Incomplete mail
This type of mail accounts for about 1/3 of all insurance consulting emails. The so-called incomplete mail includes not having a resume in the letter, not leaving a contact in the letter, not saying who you are (this is the most sweaty ...). ）。 Usually, I can only reply to this kind of message with the same word "Please add complete personal information/CV, BlaBla ... ”。 You consult GPA/postgraduate, how can not explain their basic situation? Complete personal basic information is a prerequisite for a successful "ceramic" letter.

Interested readers can also take a shift to my previous article in the Bupt Forum: [Original experience] GPA/The art and technology of contacting a mentor when you graduate

The art and Technology of e-mail communication