- document collaboration (please take a look at the attached document)
- schedule coordination (when will you have the time to talk)
- task management (please finish the document by 10 tomorrow)
- discussions (what do you think about the new plan?)

And shift to online collaboration tools for the above, which offer specialized tools for each of the above. We did a whitepaper on this recently – http://www.hyperoffice.com/business-email-overl...

Another great piece of advice is to keep the emotion out of responses. In many instances, emotion never is received the way it's intended for the recipient.

Using tools and scripts to auto-sort and remove junk from the Inbox is important but does require a regular check to ensure no one falls into the cracks of email filters.

Using colors and tagging in email is a great way to quickly organize and see what's going on in your email at any given time. I wrote a fairly lengthy post about this but it's helpful, Email Is Not a To-Do List! (Tutorial on Email Tagging). I focused on using Mozilla Thunderbird to do email tagging, in the examples.

Great advice, Chris. I use subject lines on a regular basis as it's needed: “URGENT,” “TIMELY,” “REVIEW,” “REFERENCE” — using these words before the subject line is to set the expectations on response and the priority.

~Joseph

It seems like there is a unifying mindset that these ideas seem to flow from. The idea that you do not just write an email with the “things” you want to say. You write an email with an eye towards what your end goal for the communication is.