Good email etiquette costs nothing and is worth a lot

Good email etiquette costs nothing and is worth a lot

Have you ever received no reply to an email? Is it down to email overload, arrogance or plain bad manners?

There is no need to say thank you for each and every email you receive. However there is a time and a place when a simple response is needed.

No reply, no relationship

Recently a well-established trade magazine asked for volunteers to write expert online columns. They never either acknowledged or replied to my email. Is this because they feel no need to demonstrate the basic simple courtesy just blogged by Ted Coine or is the requesting editor's email inbox so overstuffed they don't read half their emails?

Worst of all, is it old guard establishment arrogance?

No excuse for bad manners

Compare this experience with a smaller, newer website which made the same request and has taken the time to reply and nurture our relationship. They've even created a learning experience for me as an added bonus.

It’s a competitive market no matter what your business, but especially for online content. Just look at AOL’s takeover of the Huffington Post. All email software lets you send automatic responses and create template emails to use to say ‘thanks but the post has been filled’. There is no excuse for bad manners.

What do you think? Who would you rather give your business to?

Image from Flickr user CarbonNYC under a Creative Commons licence.