Designer Tip - Communication

 
DESIGNER TIP
Good follow up is an important part of professional communication. I think we forget sometimes that not all email gets delivered immediately! Have you ever had to say, “I’m sorry for not replying sooner – your email went to my spam folder”? Or had someone tell you that they never got the email you sent?
For important communications, it is a good idea to set yourself a reminder to follow up if you haven’t heard back from someone in 2 or 3 days. And in some cases, I think it’s OK to ask in your email – please reply to let me know you’ve gotten this.
I found myself under some intense pressure in the last week because of follow-up failures (on my part!) – everything turned out OK in the end but I could have saved myself some stress had I followed up earlier instead of just assuming that people had received my communication. As you ALL know, everyone is busy and things get dropped and overlooked. For your most important projects, adding follow up to your routine can save you some headaches later on.

Resources for creating reminders:
FollowUpThen – create follow-up reminders on the fly while composing emails
Google Calendar – set email reminders, pop-ups on your computer and text messages 
Get it Done app -  comprehensive task management system
Letter Me Letter – send emails to yourself at a later date
FutureMe – another way to send future emails