2. Here’s your [holiday name] to do list. Holidays are a busy period, both for marketers and consumers alike. Most of us are turn back to the good ol’ pen and paper to put together all kinds of to-do lists.
I had a boss that required OOO messages anytime you left the office. A single sick day, leaving four hours early, coming in two hours late, etc. This at an org that didn’t require quick email responses, and at which people typically only put up OOOs for multiple days out.
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I might sound nitpicky but the language is important. “Might” or “may be” or “slower than usual” are vague and don’t offer the sender all that much information about when you’re really going to respond to them. Worse, they do a horrible job of protecting the time of the email receiver who, as the responder notes, is not in the office! Such a responder implies that, not only will the vacationer reply to the email, but they may not even miss a beat. They may be slow to respond, but they also might not.
I definitely hate the overshares. And I have one coworker whose rigidly precise & formal language comes off as pretentious and condescending. She sets up an out of office every time she leaves slightly early, so I get them A LOT.
Seconded, with one exception: I got one once from a distant coworker which said “I have broken my arm in a kitten-related fall and will be out for (…)”. Everyone else uses boilerplate language so that one definitely stood out, but I thought it was the right level of mildly amusing.
Out of Office replies can be turned on very easily and even timed to expire at a designated time. But did you know you can customize your OOF so that some people do not get the auto reply, or that they get a customized reply different than the rest of the group? The steps below will show you how.
For those of you arguing that entrepreneurs and salespeople must always be available, I present to you Exhibit A. While this is specific to Yesware (and you should check out their other OOO examples), it's easy enough to tweak to fit your industry.
I had a colleague who simply never answered her phone or set up her voicemail. She still listed the number on her business card and email .sig, she just never answered or checked voicemail. When she took a new job another colleague inherited her phone number and when he went to set up his voicemail there were basically eight years’ worth of messages left for her that he had to delete.
Proof that some people just Don’t Get It: in response to my out of office voicemail message directing callers to contact my co-worker for anything urgent, a woman left the following message on MY voicemail: “Co-worker, I am having this issue, blah, blah, blah. Please call me at X.” Yeah, I–not co-worker–got the message a week later when I returned.
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That’s what I always reasoned… better to annoy with too much information that saves hassle on the backend then be brief upfront and sentence people to OoO purgatory.
Website: https://www.themuse.com/advice/6-outofoffice-templates-for-the-holidays-that-you-can-copy-and-paste-now
closing phrase; email signature template; sender's name; sender's contact information; Your email closing is the last thing a reader sees, so it can leave a lasting impression. A good, professional email closing will make a positive impression. A sloppy email closing full of mistakes may cause the recipient to view the email sender as less than
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The answer lies in writing an effective out-of-office message to help reduce the interruptions. “Let key people know you’ll be gone before you leave,” says Ivan Misner, founder of the global business network BNI and author of Who’s In Your Room? The Secret to Creating Your Best Life. “That will help reduce your email. Then craft an out-of-office message for everyone else.”
No need to go into great detail that you're traveling to seven different European countries. Simply state whether you're on vacation, at a conference, or on a business trip. This will give the sender a general idea of whether you're be checking your email while you're out. "I'm currently on vacation/at a conference/on a business trip."
Website: https://www.ringcentral.com/us/en/blog/setting-up-vacation-and-holiday-call-rules/