How to send really bad emails
Email is a wonderful tool and you can use it to communicate with staff and customers. Unfortunately, very few people have ever had training on how to use email and the internet. This means that even people working in the same organisation have wildly differing understandings of how to send email…
Here’s how to send really bad emails.
Delay your reply at least couple of weeks - this will make people think that their email program is at fault, or anti spam software has captured their message or even better make them come and ask you about it wasting more time.
- Ignore requests for information as long as you can. If possible wait until after just any deadline. Then ring them to say “I got your email and I am just about to deal with it”
- Under no circumstances acknowledge receipt of sensitive or important data.Obviously this should never be sent via email.
- ALWAYS WRITE ALL YOUR MESSAGE TEXT IN CAPITALS.
- IMHO Jargon is good so HTH. It doesn’t matter if the other person doesn’t understand. Make them find out.
- Make sure there is legal disclaimer in large bold font attached to every email. It is important that this should overshadow the message you’re trying to communicate. Don’t even think about put this on a web page and linking the email to it…
Be very careful to make sure that all the recipients’ email addresses can be seen by everyone who reads the message. It doesn’t matter if they work outside your organisation. You have given the spammers a head start.
- Make sure you do “reply all” with a juvenile comment. “I agree” sent to 400 people is superb…
- Make sure you don’t give them any clues as to how to contact you using the telephone. Make them hunt around for your phone number, the exercise will do them good…
- ALWAYS attach at least 3 WORD/EXCEL documents to each and every message. An extra tip is is to resend multiple versions of the same document in quick succession. You don’t have to bother about version control. Large documents will also clog up the persons Inbox, network servers or as a bonus – both…
Also not everyone might have the same version of office as you but hey – that’s their problem…
- Don’t bother spell checking your emails. You spelling is always perfect and it’s only an email anyway.
- Send a copy to as many people as you can think of - They’ve got time to read things of passing interest. It also protects you if things go wrong. Think of it as a form of free insurance.
- Sending emails to people on holiday is always a good idea. They will catch up in no time when they get back..
- Make sure the recipient can’t prioritise reading by using bland subject titles, like “Help!” or “Information wanted!”
…and finally - Always remember people have nothing better to do than sift through your email everyday.
Have you got all that? Of course, we’re all professionals, aren’t we? We would NEVER do anything like this, would we?