Posted on Charity Village July 2003

E-mail is the most common activity of those online in Canada. In a summary of a 2001 Ipsos-Reid survey, CyberAtlas reported that e-mail was accessed several times a week by 88% of online Canadians, and daily by 62%. The average user received 22 messages per day. It's likely that the numbers are higher now.

(By the way, Internet penetration in Canada is estimated at about 53% according to CyberAtlas, somewhat lower than in the U.S.)

Eighty-five percent of online Canadians in 2001 believed that e-mail makes them more efficient at work, but they also reported that e-mail overload was becoming a serious problem. Here are some of their complaints:

…[The] annoyance of receiving irrelevant messages from colleagues (which happens to 21% frequently and 45% occasionally), and the misuse or abuse of blind copying, which 46% frequently or occasionally experience. A further 42% have often been the uncomfortable recipient of an e-mail that has had the wrong tone, and one-quarter experience miscommunications as a result of the tone of an e-mail. Joke e-mails are also a contentious issue, but Internet users are split. About the same proportion agree they often receive joke e-mails that they consider inappropriate (37%), as those who agree they look forward to receiving joke e-mails at work (35%).

“People have forgotten their manners at the e-mail table when it comes to interpersonal e-mail communications. Things that were unacceptable in a phone conversation or a person-to-person discussion have suddenly become the norm among e-mail users,” Mossop said. “It's an example of a classic technological conundrum; we have invented this wonderful technology, but have neglected to consider the rules or the ethics surrounding its usage.”

But when asked on an unprompted basis, 43% of Canadian Internet users said their number one pet peeve of e-mail usage is spam. Spam received five times as many mentions as the next often-cited problem of unsolicited sales requests — chain letters, pornography, jokes and viruses (each were mentioned by 8% or less).

This is important information for agencies that are using e-mail to communicate with donors, volunteers and other stakeholders. Anything that looks like spam, even if it was acceptable a couple of years ago when e-mail wasn't so burdensome, will infuriate recipients now. But I covered spam last September; this month, I'm focusing on e-mail etiquette.

Please ensure that all staff know the basics of polite e-mail use. Agencies sometimes make 'beginner's mistakes' that vastly irritate people who use e-mail for a living. Errors of etiquette are good ways to alienate people in government, business or other not-for-profits who deal with a hundred or more e-mails a day. Furthermore, it's difficult for recipients to explain the rules to colleagues and friends who don't know them. It's like telling someone that they have bad breath; it's hard to do, and embarrassing for both parties. So your agency may be causing a lot of annoyance without knowing it.

Following is a checklist of recommendations on e-mail etiquette, or 'netiquette', that you can adapt for your staff, by Kass Johns. For details and explanations see the full article at www.kassj.com/n etiquette/netiquette.html

1. ALL CAPS means shouting.
2. Use underscores or asterisks for emphasizing words.
3. Watch your tone — it's written, not verbal communication.
4. Check your spelling.
5. Quote back only what is relevant.
6. Use an automatic signature, especially if you are a business.
7. Where are you located if requesting goods or services?
8. Don't send unsolicited file attachments.
9. Use a descriptive Subject line.
10. Only forward jokes and chainletters if you are SURE the recipient wants them (and hasn't already gotten a copy or three from someone else).
11. Don't send “Check This Out” unsolicited URLs.
12. Don't expose your e-mail routing list to spammers.
13. If you are on AOL, do not use the “Forward” command.
14. Don't believe every cybermyth, urban legend, hoax or virus “alert” sent to you (verify it before believing or forwarding it to anyone else by visiting rbanlegends.about.com/culture/beliefs/urbanlegends/mbody.htm).

There are many, many web sites on e-mail etiquette, and most of them have the same advice. For example, the following excerpt is from an article by a grumpy old-time e-mail user regarding etiquette breaches, complete with an 'annoyance meter' for each one. I can't recommend the article for distribution because the writing is sometimes nasty. However, he sure expresses the frustration that many netizens (citizens of the Internet) feel:

A couple of my correspondents are on several joke – or story-a-day mailing lists and apparently assume that I would join these lists if I just knew how. Add to this the urban legends they forward and my intake of junk mail from these sources is worse than spam — since a few of these e-mails might include a personal message from the sender, so I dare not set up a bozo filter. It is hard for me to know how to respond without hurting their feelings — especially since they are neophytes and probably don't realize the volume of e-mail an old-timer gets. . . The point is, don't assume that other people you know want to see all the interesting stories you receive in your in-box.

In other news:

Jakob Nielsen, usability guru, has just written a great article on “Usability for $200“, describing how you can build in usability principles on a tiny budget. Anyone designing or paying for a web site should read this article.

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Gillian Kerr, Ph.D., C.Psych.

President, RealWorld Systems

gkerr at realworldsystems.net