By Joanie Ogg, CTC, MCC
President, NACTA

Are you like me and have a love/hate relationship with E-mail? I cannot imagine how I would survive in business without it (although we managed to do just fine in the days before it was invented). I’m not saying we should stop using it — I’m totally addicted and could not stop if I tried. I’m just saying we should find the most productive way to use it, so we’re not so completely tied to it that we’re lost without it.
NACTA is headquartered in Alexandria, VA but I work from home on the West Coast. While I do travel a great deal for business, my home is still my main office and has been so for more than 10 years. I cannot imagine working any other way.
I want to share a true story with you that happened to me a couple of weeks ago in my West Coast Home Based office. I awoke at about 6 a.m., as is pretty typical for me. I grabbed my coffee and headed to my office to check E-mail. I discovered that our satellite was out and we had no connectivity!
My husband Tom discovered this in his office about the same time. His first words to me were, “Well, we better head down to Starbucks or Kinko’s.” We are able to connect at any outlet of either chain nationwide with our T-Mobile account.
I love my Starbucks, but my answer was, “No.” I told him I wanted to stay and see what I could accomplish without E-mail. I envisioned finally filing those stacks of paper on my desk without the interruption of E-mail and, perhaps, end up having a very productive day. I convinced myself this would be a good test. Could I survive for a day without E-mail at work?
I spent the morning making phone calls. I actually phoned people on my E-mail list and heard live voices. I was able to get answers to questions in seconds instead of awaiting a reply E-mail. What a revelation!
Yes, I did get those papers filed and I accomplished a great deal in a simple four hours. The satellite began working at about noon and, of course, I was back online.
It was so helpful to realize that E-mail often wastes a good deal of my time. If I were to schedule my time to do E-mail and then perhaps turn it off for a few hours, would I accomplish more? I have since tried to limit my time daily and schedule my work day a bit differently and, yes, it has helped.
The truth is that, of course, E-mail has become one our primary means of communication in the travel industry. It simply works well for our business and many others and, of course, it’s free!
I discovered some interesting tips about using E-mail more effectively that I would like to share with you and, hopefully, you will find it works well for you, too.

The All-Important Subject Line
When you browse through your inbox, do you ever get messages with no subject line or perhaps just “Re:” and nothing else? I often dismiss these as spam, unless I recognize the sender.
Always include a subject line and if it’s not just a reply, be sure to make it meaningful to the recipient. Don’t use all caps. Make it brief, but succinct.
When you reply to a message, keep the subject line on the same thread of conversation. You might want to add something at the end of the subject line like “Update” or a point you want to get across, so that the recipient can recognize the importance of the new information that you are sharing on a topic, especially if it’s several replies later.

The Image
If you are sending personal E-mail, you certainly can have more freedom to express yourself with colors, smilies, etc. Some recipients really do not like to download images or wait patiently for all of your fun designs. Always know your recipient.
Business E-mails, however, are a whole different ball game. Stay away from images and graphics that are not optimized for speed of viewing. This is especially important when you have a thread going, as those images in your signature file will load each time and one thread may have 30 logos in it based on the number of E-mails in a thread.
Keep the content on the subject. It is better to start all over in a new message with a new subject line than to bring new topics into the text of a thread. If you or the recipient ever needs to search for E-mails based on a particular subject line, it will be much easier to find if it is current and on topic.

‘Gramer & Speelling’
Yes, spell check did catch those above words, but beware — it does not catch all misspellings. In fact, it can actually “correct” it for you incorrectly if you are not careful. Please be sure to use it wisely.
I am guilty of this — I have had members correct my spelling in NACTA messages. It’s quite embarrassing and there is really no reason for it anymore. The old adage “haste makes waste” comes in here.

Formatting
Some E-mail programs support fancy formatting. You want to be careful not to overdo it — while italics, bolding and fancy fonts look nice, not all E-mail programs support these functions and your message can end up looking really bad to the recipient.

Electronic Courtesy
Say please and thank you. Always reply if it is warranted even if you do not have a complete answer. Do not leave the senders hanging if they are asking for information. Just a quick message that you will get the information to them soon will suffice.

Read & Re-Read
This is very important, particularly when you are sending an E-mail that may be emotional in some way. Sometimes we sit down (or at least I do) and start replying based on feelings.
I now put my E-mails in the outbox to read again before I send them when I need to check myself. When I do this, I typically do not send what I originally wrote. Amazing how a mood can change the E-mail.
Just to emphasize this point, ask yourself this question: Have you ever hit “send” and then panicked when you realize it shouldn’t have been sent? It is probably one of the most horrible feelings in the techie world, other than a computer crash.
All in all, E-mail is one of the most terrific marketing tools any business can use. Keep in mind that we are all dealing with different people and different personalities and we want to come across the best we can in all forms of communication.
E-mail surely will continue to change and improve our productivity as long as we use it wisely and carefully.