When one of my colleagues went on vacation, he sent an out-of-office message that was both clever and smart. First, he sent the recipient on an imaginary scavenger hunt to "the highest peak of the tallest mountain." He used humorous absurdity to make it clear that he would not be checking email while he was away.
The response on Twitter has also been overwhelmingly positive. "I love Daimler's approach to holiday email," says the entrepreneur Nuno Almeida, while the FT's Hanna Kuchler tweets: "Now this is email management."
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Unfortunately, I can’t answer your email (even though my office is three feet away). I’ll get back to you once I’m back from my long-awaited trip to the fridge. Bought tickets on TripAdvisor and everything.
My OOO auto reply is fairly detailed. I have links to information for products I work with, an alternate point of contact for people to approach, etc. It’s really a CYA thing. What irks me about some OOO auto replies is when the person who is out has an alternate point of contact who is also out. Both are obvious planned absences, and both people are on the same team. Don’t they talk to one another about vacation??
It is no secret that social media now plays a prominent role in helping a company remain competitive in an increasingly digital corporate environment. You ...
My OOO is almost always “I’m out of the office and will be returning on x date.” My email sig has instructions along the lines of “for questions on x, email this list” for a couple of the more common areas people would contact me about that might need an urgent reply (as the lists go to more than just me, obviously), but most people have finally figured out to contact those lists to start with, anyway. If I were in the middle of a project or something that needed to be moved along in my absence, the project teams usually know when we’re out, but I’d put a back up in that case, if needed, but generally there’s not much to be gained by a longer OOO from me.
Author: Dave Meyer Filed Under: BizzyWeb, Buzz Tips, Constant Contact, News Tagged: BizzyWeb, Email Marketing, How To, Minneapolis online marketing
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Have you ever had one of those most amazing kind of days; the kind of day that you will remember when you are old and gray and telling your grandchildren stories? Well, I seem to have those days quite often. In fact, if you’re seeing this message, it’s probably because I’m having one of those kinds of days today, and I’m not going to respond to your message.
I want to know how everyone who works from home is wording their OOOs. Are you saying you’re out of the office? Away from your computer? Have closed the door to your home office?
“For example, if a hacker knows that the chief financial officer of a company is OOO, thanks to the information in the auto-reply message, an attacker could impersonate the CFO on email and target another individual in the company’s finance team asking them to make a payment or update bank details for them while they are offline,” says Sadler.
So what do good out-of-office messages look like? Here are a handful of examples that will help you craft the perfect out-of-office message:
Q. If there’s a snowstorm during winter break, will sidewalks and parking lots be cleared?
I’ll be sure to reply to your message when I wade through my inbox upon my return. If your message is time-sensitive, please send an email to [contact name] at [contact email].
Merry Christmas and thanks for your email! I’m taking a few days off to spend time with my family and friends, so I won’t be answering emails as quickly as usual. You can expect to hear back from me by (insert date). Hope you have a Merry Christmas!
You may also want to include bullet points of what is in progress so that your client knows you’re on top of things. That will also likely reduce the amount of emails sitting in your inbox when you return. Unlike a more generalized email (like the one I’ve provided) that you can send en masse, you’ll want to set aside some time to send more personalized emails out.
If you're using Mail, you may be surprised to learn that there are no settings or preferences that can enable you to setup an auto-reply like you would on a corporate email system. And there are no preferences for it on iCloud either (hint hint, Apple). The only thing you can do to get around this problem is to setup an Auto Reply rule in Mail. And that's what we're going to show you how to do.