Summary of "8 Email Etiquette Tips - How to Write Better Emails at Work"

High-level summary (business focus)

Good internal email habits are a low-cost way to improve perceived competence, speed up decision-making, reduce unnecessary back-and-forth, and save colleagues’ time. These operational gains matter for teams, product managers, managers, and customer-facing roles. The video presents an 8‑point email etiquette playbook that functions like an operational SOP for workplace communication — useful for onboarding, internal-communications guidelines, and manager coaching.

Playbook / processes (actionable items & templates)

Subject-line CTA + time estimate
- Template: “[Action] — [what] — [time estimate]”
  - Examples: “5-minute survey feedback for Project X”, “Elon: approve spending estimates for Q4”
- Purpose: sets expectation, prioritizes inbox triage, increases response rate.
Single-thread rule
- Process: keep all follow-ups on the original email thread for the same topic so context/history remains in one place.
Explicitly note recipient changes
- Process: when adding/removing people, add a short line at the top (e.g., “(Added: Jane; Removed: Mark)”) to make role changes visible and explain why.
Lead with the main point (BLUF / Bottom Line Up Front)
- Template: start with the request or conclusion, then provide context underneath.
- Example: “Hi Jane — May I trouble you for the electric car revenue projection numbers? Context: product marketing is preparing a forecast deck…”
- Purpose: respects senior leaders’ time and speeds decisions.
Summarize messy inputs before replying
- Process: if you receive a long/disorganized email, bucket themes, write a short summary of the sender’s main points, confirm understanding, then respond/action.
- Benefits: reduces ambiguity, avoids extra back-and-forth, helps less organized senders.
Hyperlink instead of pasting raw URLs
- Action: use Cmd/Ctrl+K to embed links; improves readability and reduces copy-paste errors.
Default to Reply (not Reply All)
- Settings change: set default reply action to “Reply” to avoid accidental Reply All and contain mistakes.
Increase “Undo Send” window
- Settings change: set undo send to 30 seconds (vs typical 5 seconds) to catch post-send errors.

Concrete examples / templates

Subject examples:
- “5-minute survey feedback for Project X”
- “Elon: approve spending estimates for Q4”
Email body contrast (context-first vs BLUF-first):

Context-first (less preferred) Hi Jane, I’m working on the forecast deck for product marketing and we want to include detailed projections for electric car revenue from 2025–2030. The finance team pulled some numbers but they’re incomplete and there are a few different assumptions floating around. Can you help gather the final numbers and put them in Google Sheets? Let me know when you might have time to work on this. Thanks.

BLUF-first (preferred) Hi Jane — Can you provide electric car revenue projections for 2025–2030 in this Google Sheet? Context: product marketing needs the figures for the forecast deck; finance has partial numbers but we need a consolidated set with clear assumptions. Target: end of week.

Instruction example for recipient changes: add a short note at the top of the email such as

(Added: Jane; Removed: Mark)

Operational implications & recommended adoption

Adopt these items as part of an internal communication SOP (use in onboarding checklists, team norms, manager coaching).
Consider measuring impact where useful:
- Average response time
- Number of Reply-All incidents
- Average email threads per topic
- Estimated time saved per request (use subject-line time estimates to approximate)
For company-managed accounts, consider centrally applying settings changes:
- Default reply behavior → “Reply”
- Undo-send window → 30 seconds