Help Your Email Travel Across Time Zones

Do you send emails to prospects, customers, and colleagues in time zones other than your own? Here’s a simple tip that will help prevent timing mistakes and misunderstandings.

A Simple Way to Present Time

It’s so simple you might be overlooking it. Ready? Here it is: Whenever you send an email to someone in a different time zone, and you mention a specific time, make sure you reference the time in both time zones.

Let’s start with this simple message:

It would be an easy improvement to provide a time zone for a common point of reference, like this:

However, if you’re the one in the Central time zone, that’s lazy. You’ve made it clear what time you’ll be calling in your time zone, but you’re still leaving it up to the recipient to have to figure out the time conversion to their time zone. If they don’t do time conversions regularly, there’s always a chance that they’ll make a mistake and convert in the wrong direction. You don’t want that happening!

A Better Way to Present Time

You can do better. Here’s how the message might look when both time zones are mentioned.

It’s that simple! When you present both time zones no one has to guess who’s time zone needs converting.

Make sure to honor the recipient by putting their time zone first. It’s a little thing that subtly says, “You’re important.” Using these “timely tips” is a small but important way to show your customers and prospects that you’re willing to take the extra time to make sure you connect at the right time.