Thank You Emails: to send or not to send?

​​It’s a debate I’ve seen around a few times, and it’s pretty polarising; people seem to sit entirely on one side of the fence or the other, no middle-grounders. Thank you emails: should we take the time to send them, or are they irrelevant in this day and age?

As with anything, there are obvious pros and cons, along with tons of extraneous variables and situational circumstances which might affect your answer; nonetheless, it’s an interesting idea to ponder in general. Should we still go out of our way to extend those lovely, somewhat redundant manners to each person we come into contact with in business – no less encourage our team to do so – or does it really not matter at all?

To delve more deeply, this isn’t about sending a quick note to say thanks; it’s about how much value you stake in attention to detail, manners and accountability when it comes to doing business.

There are lots of critical tasks which go with many jobs – let’s use recruitment as an example, for obvious reasons. I need to be providing my clients with information, updates, support and ideas; I also need to be proactively trying to generate new ones. I need to be having conversations with potential candidates, existing candidates, job seekers active and passive. All of these tasks centre around me achieving what I need to, being productive and getting things done. So, where does time spent doing the little things which may or may not pay dividends long-term fit into it all?

MD of our sister company Certus Graduate, Sam Wheeler, recently wrote about the important/urgent debate. Is sending a thank you email either of those things – urgent or important?

In truth, you could argue it either way – for both points. Tapping out a quick thank you email isn’t going to affect those things which are already in motion, nor is it going to morbidly offend anyone if they weren’t to receive one – hopefully, anyway. So is it urgent or important? Let’s go with no in this instance.

But then, from the other point of view, it might be both; urgent, because saying thanks in a weeks’ time for something the client will have forgotten about by then is redundant – do it now, or don’t bother. And important because a client may not specifically remember, a week later on, that you thanked them in an email – but they’re much more likely to remember if you didn’t thank them at all.

Sending a quick thank you email comes naturally to me – in the same way that I’d say it aloud if someone were to hold the door open for me, serve me a beer, or even in passing tell me how cute my pup Yuki is (see my last post for proof). Most people would agree with those three – so why shouldn’t dropping someone a quick thank you email take precedence?

It shows good manners – but, not sending one doesn’t necessarily point to them being bad or non-existent. It also says a lot about how much you value the individual’s time – but again, not doing so might mean that you don’t want to take up any more of it with something they may see as pointless or irrelevant.

It’s truly one I could argue back and forth.

Discussing this amongst the team, it certainly got us thinking about the type of recruiters we want to be; it’s by no means a black and white, right or wrong answer. But, when it comes to continuing to differentiate ourselves in the markets we operate within, who knows; perhaps a simple ‘thank you’ could make all the difference between us and one of our competitors.

We like to think there’s more to it than that – but it’s a great place to start.

What say you? Are you a thank you note-er? Whether you’re pro thank you emails or against, one thing you can count on from us here at Certus Melbourne is excellence in service above all else; get in touch with our Aussie team.