I’m adding a new “Best Practices” category to the Sendmail Blog. Every week or so, this is where we’ll address many of the challenges posed by emailing in today’s world. This week, I’m going to look at email and travel.
Thanks to smartphones, it’s easier than ever to take our work on the road. We can email colleagues, clients and partners to delegate, respond, and simply remain a part of the conversation from virtually anywhere. The problem is, emailing on the go can also create some headaches.
Thankfully, with the proper settings, this should no longer involve the painful synchronization and other issues that plagued us when mobile email first arrived. But there are plenty of challenges still to be had. These include:
- The mixing of work and personal messages and accounts
While all the smartphones I know of let you select which account to send email from, it’s easy to forget to make the switch. The result: business contacts respond to the emails you send from your personal account and then start emailing you there regularly. Besides the embarrassment of having to ask them to stop emailing your personal account, there’s the added risk of missing important messages or not remembering to check your personal account when scanning for business emails later. Some may choose to prevent this by emailing personal contacts from their business account, but I was never comfortable with this. The best solution, for me, is simply to refrain from emailing my personal contacts during my work time, and not emailing business contacts during my personal time. Not only does it keep all my messages in the right place, I’m better able to maintain a healthy life balance.
- Emailing with distractions
You’re on the road. You can’t help but email from airports (and airplanes), shuttles, hotels and restaurants. But at some point, it’s a good idea to check your watch, look around, and decide whether it’s time to stop checking your email. If you’re relaxing with a beer in the bar, you’ve already pulled out of work mode and are at risk of sending an email you’d never send from your office during the day. Or, you may be in the hotel lobby having issues with check-in. Now is not the time to email! Wait until you are comfortably in your room to avoid subjecting your email contacts to undue frustration or anger.
- Sending emails too quickly
We’ve all either sent or received emails that created some unintended confusion or resentment. Mobile compounds the matter, because it’s so easy to fire off rapid responses before thinking them all the way through. Every email should be reviewed to ensure it passes the “What if someone sent this to me?” test. If there’s any chance of the recipient misunderstanding the message’s content or misinterpreting its tone, either fix the problem or consider picking up the phone.
- Reading emails too quickly
Quickly eyeballing your emails as you’re boarding a plane or hopping out of a cab may keep you in the know up to the very last minute, but it can also cause you to misread an email or miss whole bunches of them entirely. Being hurried and distracted can also make it easier for hackers and cyberthieves to lure you with their phishing, malware, and other attacks.
What email issues do you encounter while on the road? How have you