e-mail etiquette
Posted on January 11, 2006
I saw a letter from a church recently detailing the new Wednesday night classes. It was a crowded page full of many offerings, but it communicated the facts. A few days later, I saw an e-mail from the same church detailing the new Wednesday night classes and it looked horrible and was hard to read. Upon closer inspection, it was evident that the text was probably copied from MS Word, directly into the e-mail. Similar to the hard copy, the e-mail was a crowded page full of many offerings, but it communicated the facts.
Understandably, sending the text of a letter via e-mail may seem like a good idea, but there’s more to consider. E-mail communication is fairly new to the church, yet it’s an invaluable tool and needs to be handled appropriately.
For either medium, hard copy or electronic, there needs to be a certain amount of whitespace. This helps your eyes to break down what it’s seeing and comprehend the message. If the text is overwhelming, your brain tends to shut down and move on.
It makes sense to send a letter out, then send the same info via e-mail, but the first step should be to set the e-mail up then send it to yourself. A better idea is to send it to someone in the office who is not invested in it and get their opinion. This will allow you to see your work on screen and modify it as needed. Once you run it through that test and make the appropriate modifications, then you can send it out.
There’s no formula here, it’s simply about eye-appeal and effective communication. My point is, take this form of communication, e-mail, and use it effectively to ensure that your message is being read and understood.
There are more tips and guidelines to churches using e-mail which I will address soon, but if your church uses e-mail to communicate church news to members, this is a good place to start.
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