Email Etiquette Guidelines

This page is intended to give some guidance on constructing emails for use within the church.

Subject

1. The Subject of an email is one of the most useful parts of an email. It allows the recipient to quickly identify what an email is about, and assign a priority to the email. It is not unusual for busy people to receive hundreds of emails a day, and having a convenient mechanism to scan the incoming list quickly is the greatest respect you can pay to that person.

2. Make the first word of the subject a key word to the message. Within the church, using the group name in CAPITAL letters is very effective. Here are some suggestions:
   • COUNCIL: agenda papers ready for collection
   • ELDERS: discussion document attached
   • YELLOW FISH: gathering next Sunday
   • CHOIR: rehearsal moved to Room 1

3. Ensure that you have a Subject to your message!

4. If the subject changes, or refocusses upon a particular subtopic of the original mail, use a revised subject, such as:
   • YELLOW FISH: Timetable now on wiki [Was: gathering next Sunday]

Reply

1. Use Reply All with care. Make sure that your message is indeed relevant to all the people on the original mailing list. If in doubt, reply only to the author.

2. If you reply to additional people not on the author's original To or Cc list, ask the author if this is OK first.

3. For example, if a message is sent to [email protected], you can use reply all if you want everyone on the council list to see your reply, without asking the author of the original email.

4. If the material is sensitive, make sure your readers know that. Mark the email CONFIDENTIAL (in the Subject line) if you do not want it passed on to anyone else.

Content

1. It goes without saying that all email content should observe normal etiquette. Do not use insulting or obscene language, and keep emotions in check.
2. Do not forward 'chain letters'. These are an insidious form of spam, and serve no purpose other than to fill up inboxes. If you must forward others' emails, you must make sure that you have the recipient's permission before doing so.
3. Try to avoid long emails generated by long sequences of exchanges. Including the previous email when replying is useful to one or two levels, but take care to remove long or out-of-date exchanges beyond the 3rd reply.
4. Avoid attachments! Many people do NOT use Microsoft products, so including Word or Excel documents as attachments is guaranteed to annoy some of your recipients. Even pdf files, which generally can be read by all recipients should be avoided. Express your message as a plain text document - it is much easier for the recipient because they can read it without having to change applications.
5. Avoid big emails. These are usually generated by attachments, so see also the previous note. Photographs and videos are a case in point. Far better to put these on a web page and include a link to them. This dramatically reduces email traffic (which remember, your recipient is paying for to download!) Your recipient then has a choice as to whether they want to download your large file. If you do not know how to add your content to a web page, get someone to show you.

Mailing Lists

1. Several mailing lists have been set up by the church, and MUST be used in preference to any lists that are held privately. The reason for this is that mailing lists of large groups change rapidly, and using an out-of-date personal list is a sure way of a) not reaching the people you want to reach, and b) annoying those who are no longer members of the list.
2. Mailing lists with the @gwuc.org.au domain are (to be) extracted automatically from the church database, and thus will be as up-to-date as we can make them.

3. Changes to mailing lists (revised email addresses, for example) should be advised to the church database maintainers, or to the church office. The db maintainers are currently RussellGreenwood, WarrenGreenwood, MurrayLowe, DavidMorgan and JohnHurst

4. Mailing lists MUST NOT be used for any purpose other than genuine email traffic to the group in question. DO NOT use them for advertising, jokes, chain mails or the like.

JohnHurst
wikimaster, CommunicationsCommittee

CategoryCommunications