Key Terms
Email Etiquette: The set of professional standards and social norms that govern appropriate email communication in business settings.
CC (Carbon Copy): An email field used to send a copy of a message to recipients who should be informed but aren’t the primary audience.
BCC (Blind Carbon Copy): An email field that sends copies to recipients without other recipients seeing their addresses.
Email Thread: A series of connected email messages about a single topic, grouped together in conversation view.
Email Response Time: The average time between receiving an email and sending a reply—a key metric for measuring communication effectiveness.
The most important email best practices are: be clear, be concise, and be respectful. Always proofread before sending, respond within one business day, use descriptive subject lines, and organize your inbox with labels and filters.
If you want to maximize email effectiveness and avoid wasting time, you need to follow proven email best practices. This guide covers the 40 most important practices every professional should know.
What Are the Most Important High-Level Email Best Practices?
The three foundational email best practices are: be clear (avoid ambiguity), be concise (state things simply), and be respectful (value others’ time).
Be clear: The clarity of your message dictates the actions that follow. Email is not the place to beat around the bush. If there’s room for misinterpretation, you’ll rely on luck to achieve your goal. Be as direct and specific as possible.
Be concise: Don’t write a novel when a sentence or two will suffice. Concise emails take less time to write, less time to read, and force you to think critically about the point you want to make.
Be respectful: You send and receive messages with hundreds of people. Every action you take affects those people. Respect their time and values if you want to be successful.
What Are the Best Practices for Sending and Responding to Emails?
Always proofread before sending, use Gmail’s Undo Send feature, respond within one business day, gauge your emotions before sending, and follow up if you don’t get a response.
Always proofread your emails: Almost all embarrassing typos could be prevented with a simple once-over before hitting send. Build mouse-click discipline and proofread every message. If your draft started in ChatGPT or another AI tool, add an AI detector to your proofreading step to catch any robotic phrasing before it lands in someone’s inbox.
Use Undo Send as an insurance policy: In Gmail Settings, enable Undo Send to get 5-30 seconds to cancel a message after clicking send. This feature has saved me countless times from premature sends.
Turn off notifications when appropriate: You’re more focused on your current task without constant notifications. Establish “available” and “away” periods for consistency.
Gauge your emotions before sending: If you’re stressed out or angry, save your draft and wait until you cool off. You can’t take back a message after it’s sent.
Respond quickly (but not immediately): People appreciate quick response times. Respond within a business day, preferably within an hour. However, responding within minutes establishes unsustainable expectations.
Follow up if you don’t get a response: A polite follow-up message can help you get results. Wait at least a day before following up, and don’t send more than a few follow-ups in succession. For help, see our guide on how to get someone to respond to your email.
What Are the Best Practices for Email Subject Lines?
Always include a subject line, keep it descriptive but concise, avoid excessive punctuation, and update the subject line when the topic changes.
Always include a subject line: It only takes a minute to add one. Subject lines are vital for organizing your inbox and the inboxes of recipients. For examples, see our guide on sales email subject lines that work.
Keep it descriptive but concise: Descriptive subject lines convey the email’s content. Concise ones don’t take up excessive visual space. Aim for both.
Avoid excessive punctuation: Multiple exclamation points, all caps, or excessive formatting makes subject lines harder on the eyes and may reduce open rates.
Alter the subject line for new topics: If the conversation changes, update the subject line. “Client A Departure” is clearer than continuing with “Client A Onboarding” when circumstances change.
What Are the Best Practices for Email Body Content?
Know your audience, start with a warm greeting, get to the point quickly, use formatting to improve readability, watch your tone, and close appropriately.
Know your audience: Don’t email your boss the same way you’d email a close friend. Adjust formality, terminology, and tone based on your recipient.
Start with a warm greeting: Include the recipient’s name (not “to whom it may concern”) and choose a greeting appropriate for the formality level. For help, see our post on email greetings.
Get to the point quickly: People don’t want to read sentences of fluff before discovering your purpose. Unless it’s a friendly personal conversation, be direct immediately.
Use formatting strategically: Numbered and bulleted lists make emails easier to scan. Bold and italic formatting highlights key information. Lengthy, messy paragraphs are hard to parse.
Watch your tone: Without body language or vocal inflection, tone is tricky over email. Be cautious with sarcasm. Assume someone could misinterpret your writing.
Summarize long emails: If you must write a long email, include a quick summary—a TL;DR version with main points or a bulleted list of next steps.
Assign action items clearly: If assigning tasks, call them out with bullet points or bold formatting. Create a section at the end with action items for each person.
Avoid questionable content: Inappropriate content jeopardizes your message. Email is too permanent and tone too hard to discern for risky jokes.
Close appropriately: Choose a strong closer like “sincerely” or “cheers” appropriate for the formality level. For guidance, see our post on how to end a professional email.
Learn keyboard shortcuts: Gmail keyboard shortcuts save seconds that add up to hours over months and years of email management.
What Are the Best Practices for CC, BCC, and Forwarding?
Use To and CC fields separately, don’t over-CC people, avoid “copying up” to supervisors, be careful with Reply All, and check every field before sending.
Use To and CC fields separately: “To” recipients are the primary audience who should respond. “CC” is a courtesy for people who should be informed but don’t need to respond. For more, see what CC means and how to use it.
Don’t spam CC and BCC fields: Adding too many people increases thread complexity and fills inboxes with irrelevant messages. See our guide on how to use BCC properly.
Avoid “copying up”: CCing someone’s supervisor to make them look bad or leverage the conversation is bad form. If you must contact their superior, do it in a separate message.
Be careful with Reply All: Reply All can accidentally send messages to unintended recipients or keep people on threads they want no part of. Use it only when all recipients need the response.
Check every field before sending: Are you sending to Alice Johnson or Alice Johnston? Have you CC’d the right people? Did you accidentally hit Reply All? Verify before sending.
Don’t forward chain letters: Forwarding entertainment messages and chain letters annoys colleagues and makes them take your messages less seriously.
Acknowledge misdirected emails: If you receive a message not meant for you, write a courtesy note to the sender. This helps them find the correct recipient and prevents future mistakes.
What Are the Best Practices for Managing Email Threads?
Keep recipient lists tight, avoid tangents by splitting threads when necessary, and make it clear who should respond and with what information.
Keep your recipient list tight: Fewer recipients means fewer responses and fewer notifications. With too many participants, any thread gets out of hand quickly.
Avoid tangents and split when necessary: When conversations drift to tangentially related topics, get back on track or recommend participants split off to a new thread.
Make it clear who should respond: Call people out by name and specify what they should respond with—their thoughts, an attachment, or missing information. Clear directions lead to tighter, more effective threads.
What Are the Best Practices for Email Inbox Organization?
Pick an organization system and stick to it, delete unnecessary emails, use labels and filters, snooze messages when appropriate, and audit your inbox regularly.
Pick a system and stick to it: Everyone has unique email preferences. What’s important is consistency in your organization method.
Delete unnecessary emails: Nobody wants an inbox with 100,000 messages. Occasionally delete unnecessary emails—either as you go or during monthly cleaning. Check out our guide on the best email cleaner apps.
Use labels, markers, and stars: Gmail has built-in features for organization. Create a system for using these consistently; you’ll browse your inbox much more efficiently when everything is color-coded.
Audit and clean your inbox regularly: Go through your inbox periodically to check your organization. Relabel or resort emails that don’t fit your intended style.
Snooze messages when appropriate: Gmail’s snooze feature lets you set emails to reappear at a later time. It’s helpful when a message won’t be relevant for another week.
Create automatic filters: Use Gmail’s automatic filters to sort, label, and categorize incoming messages. This saves significant manual effort. For more tips, see our guide on how to organize your Gmail inbox.
How Do You Analyze and Improve Your Email Habits?
Visualize your email activity with analytics tools to identify weaknesses, measure response times, track email volume, and continuously improve your communication effectiveness.
How can you improve your areas of weakness if you don’t know they exist? EmailAnalytics is a robust analytics platform for Gmail that lets you review dozens of data visuals about your email habits and those of your employees.
From there, you can make a plan to improve effectiveness and measure results. Sign up for a free trial and learn how to become a better emailer.
Frequently Asked Questions About Email Best Practices
Jayson is a long-time columnist for Forbes, Entrepreneur, BusinessInsider, Inc.com, and various other major media publications, where he has authored over 1,000 articles since 2012, covering technology, marketing, and entrepreneurship. He keynoted the 2013 MarketingProfs University, and won the “Entrepreneur Blogger of the Year” award in 2015 from the Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs. In 2010, he founded a marketing agency that appeared on the Inc. 5000 before selling it in January of 2019, and he is now the CEO of EmailAnalytics and OutreachBloom.
