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Recipient Type

Purpose

To:

Place on the To: line those recipients who must pay attention to your email, those that must act on it, etc.  Be very selective to ensure you have only those that truly need to be involved.

Cc:

Carbon Copy people who should pay attention to the email but have no responsibility to act or otherwise do anything with the email.  This can also be synonymous with making the message an FYI: for these people.

Bcc:

In rare cases where you feel you must copy a recipient, but you do not wish for them to appear to those on the To: or Cc: line as being included in the message.  A typical use of this is external communications, where multiple Partners are placed on the Bcc: so they cannot see who all received the message.

Subject Line Beginning

Purpose

Account Name:

The account/partner name is typically a key indicator of the topic at hand.  Not necessary always (like on the account alias), but valuable for virtual team members to use to ensure consistency. 

SUBJECT: Motorola: MSN Meeting Update

FYI:

Begin emails that have informational content but do not require any action or follow-up.

SUBJECT: FYI: Everest Licensing Docs

Action:

Used to denote that the email contains action items for the people on the To: line, and the people on the cc: line need to be aware of these actions.  (Note: you can also denote the timing of the actions on the subject line)

SUBJECT: Action: Need Partner List

Learning:

Meant for nuggets of learned information, i.e., tips, tricks, tidbits, etc.  No action or follow up required.  Subtle difference with FYI. 

SUBJECT: Learning: Everest Licensing Docs

Feedback:

Not time critical, not mandatory, but an opportunity to provide feedback.

SUBJECT: Feedback: Partner Breakfast Improvements

Importance Level

Meaning

Normal (Default)

When the content of the email is neither high priority nor low priority.  Used with most emails.

High 

The email is of high priority, and thus should be read sooner than Normal or Low emails.  Examples include Action: Emails, urgent customer issues, highly relevant news, etc.

Low 

This email is Low priority, which means it can be read at a later time.  Often, these will be used for Tidbits: general news releases, or casual conversation emails.

Timing

Meaning

Follow Up Flag 

When the action in the message has a time based response, use the Follow Up Flag feature to note this to the recipients.  Click the flag, set the Flag To: to either a standard message or customize your own, and then select the date and time that’s appropriate.  When that time arrives, the recipient will receive a pop up reminder of the action.  It is important to use this judiciously as it can get annoying for someone to get lots of action pop-ups.

Expires After

A bit more complicated, but very valuable.  When sending the message, think about when this message will no longer apply.  Examples of this can be team meetings, launch information, events, etc.

Then, press the Options… button, check the Expires After option, and put in a time for the message to expire.  At the expiration time, the message will gray out and strikethrough the message to indicate it is no longer meaningful.

Subject Line

You can also note in the subject line the timing of the message, for example:

SUBJECT: Action: Select Partners By 3/3/00

However, it is preferred that in conjunction you use the Follow Up Flag.