Wisdom on Emailing that's so cliche

"That's so cliche!" Have you heard that said in your circle lately? I have. As a matter of fact I've lost count. Let's consider it. How does anything become a cliche? It must be commonplace for starters. It's likely to be public knowledge. It must have been tried and tested by countless people. It must be so obvious that you'd have to be an accomplished bozo for it to be news to you. I further argue it must have been found to work so many times by so many people that eventually it became a cliche.

I work with lots of smart creatives in Nairobi and I have lost count the number of times I have been told that my tips on emailing are so cliche. While it may be cliche, within this same circle I frequently interact with friends frustrated about lost clients, missed appointments, missed offers and even missed interviews. How are their frustrations largely connected? Most have to do with missed emails, wrongly worded emails, forgotten attachments, emails without certain crucial details and even emails copy pasted without edition. I have friends who have emailed certain persons so many times that they doubt if their emails were received at all. I wonder if perhaps they're to be blamed.

At the start of my career, I interned as a lead paralegal in one of Nairobi's medium sized law firms. Much of my time was spent handling correspondence between the firm and the public (clients, other firms, courts, witnesses, the police). In that short time I understood the importance of emails. Imagine missing an email from the court registry on a scheduled court date. Imagine missing an email from the court on a ruling made. Or copying the wrong party on your email on material information.

I have a few tips that I carry from the few years spent in the legal field that I've found to be extremely useful in my entrepreneurial journey and I think they are useful to anyone who relies on email as a key communication channel: They include;

1. Respond quickly to every email. If you're unable to, there is a reason we've auto response tools to let people know why you can't respond immediately.
2. When writing an email, every word matters and useless prose doesn't. (Trust me it's a challenge especially for anyone trained in legalese). Be crisp in your delivery-concise and to the point.
3. Clean out your inbox regularly. There is a reason we all hate piling dishes or piling laundry-sorting through the mess.
4. Handle Email in LIFO (Last In First Out) basis.
5. Remember you are a router. What does a router do?
6. Don't yell.
7. Make it easy to follow on requests. It's a good habit to include your phone number as you sign off. Sometimes your email recipients remember they've not responded on their way home or in between tasks and they'd probably prefer to just call you back. Include your email address in your signature. If I can just click on it and quickly respond, trust me that works all day long. If you are like me, I guess it's not fun to scroll up and down through any email to reply especially when you are out of your work space and would like to respond to an email using a small screen device like a mobile phone.

In conclusion, the art of social media by Guy Kawasaki includes more useful tips email included that I highly recommend https://youtu.be/fZBTGJODHvo