Five Sure-Fire Ways to Get Your Email Ignored or Be Annoying

When you send an important email, you want it to be read. Sometimes, you get the feeling the recipient either only read part of it or ignored it completely. If that's the case, then you're probably guilty of one of these annoying five things that ensure your email is ignored.

According to MailTime's Email Etiquette Survey, these are the five biggest mistakes that make email annoying and get them ignored either partially or completely. I've also included my personal reasons why these types of emails are annoying or ignored in parentheses.

1. Content that is insensitive in tone. (save the frustration, anger, and other nastiness for face-to-face conversations)
2. Email that's not personally addressed to you. (looks like spam)
3. Email with numerous replies. (too difficult to follow the string or obviously not important)
4. Email with numerous recipients. (appears to be an fyi rather than important personal correspondence)
5. Email that is too long. (is all this important and do I really have time to read it to find out?)

On the subject of too long, the Mail Time survey found that 51% of people won't read an email longer than two paragraphs. That number jumps to 84% if the email is longer than four paragraphs, indicating short and concise is the best approach.

[MailTime]