Email Signature
Your signature is a great place to provide key information and some marketing. Your name, website and contact information (email restated or phone number) is good information to have in the signature. Also if you have an upcoming event such as an exhibition, you can include key information to add a layer of self-promotion and marketing.
Keep it short, simple, and informative.
Quotes seem like a nice touch but are added clutter and plus nobody reads those anyway. Additional paragraphs of information or any text you need to physically scroll through to read is too much information. This added info will most likely be skipped by the receiver.
Reply All Button
Avoid hitting the reply-all button as much as you can. You will piss off many people and end up filling inboxes with unnecessary correspondence. Unless this is a group email where everyone needs to know the really important information you are sending out then just hit reply and send one email to one person.
“I am out of the office.”
While the out-of-the-office email seems like courteous correspondence, everyone gets annoyed with these auto-responding emails. If possible, skip these emails for your art business. We are so connected in the world today and checking your email accounts is so easy and accessible that there is no reason to be using these emails….especially outside the corporate world.
Please note that if you are sending auto emails that you are out of the studio, attending a residency, or traveling, you are telling the world that your home or studio is currently vacant. For your safety, do not alert people that you are away! Before you go on an extended leave, take safety precautions before you go. Turn on your security system, use light timers in your space so you look home, or let your rental office know you will be away so they can keep an eye on suspicious activity.
Subject Lines
Subject lines are actually very informative. This tells the reader what to expect in your correspondence.
Avoid typing your entire email into just the subject line and sending a blank email. An example of this would be an email with the subject line, “Call me” with no additional information in the email body. For some people, they will just delete the message because the email looks blank, this type of email also looks unprofessional, lazy, and unnecessarily urgent.
Difficult Emails
If you have received an email that is not so positive and difficult to respond to, take a few days to pause and think of a response. A quick off-the-cuff email is not the best way to respond and you may regret what you type.
