Email tends to feel like a conversation, which can lead us into bad habits, starting at the very beginning, with the Subject line.
If you are emailing a friend, just to talk, a subject like like, “hey” or “hi” is okay. Not great, but acceptable. In a professional environment, though, and when emailing someone who gets a lot of emails, there is an important rule to remember:
The Subject line is not a greeting.
The Subject line is a triage tool. When your email arrives in the recipient’s Inbox, the Subject is all he or she sees. Give that person enough information to decide, at a glance, how to deal with that email. Describe precisely what the email is about, if it is urgent, and if possible, what is required of them. Compare these two subject lines:
Subject: fire alarm??????
and
Subject: Urgent! Fire alarm is going off. What do I do?
Which email is more likely to get a quick response? (The times when you should pick up a phone instead of sending an email is another topic, perhaps for another time.)
The email Subject line is not a greeting. It is a tool that you can use to help your recipient quickly find those emails that are important. Your correspondent probably gets dozens or hundreds of emails every day, spends way too much time trying to manage them (and not being managed by them), and may be reading them on a pocket device. A clear, informative subject line puts one less burden on them.
The next time you find yourself with your computer’s cursor flashing in the Subject field, stop for a moment and ask yourself, “What subject would give me enough information to know how to handle this email, without having to open and read it?”
Your co-workers and business associates will thank you.