Working Mom 3.0: 5 steps to better emails

The workday begins bright and early for stay-at-home working moms, and it's actually a competitive advantage when it comes to increasing the chances your email will be read. According to Baydin, the makers of email plugin Boomerang, most people prefer to read emails before they begin to work, around 5 or 6 am.

Baydin's data also suggests that there are few "hot" words to include and "not" words to omit in email subject lines, to lower the odds of deletion. (The data also indicate that nearly half of a user's inbox gets trashed, and it takes just three seconds for a user to decide.) If you currently use words like: "invite," "social," "join," "confirm" or "assistance" in your email subjects, it's likely to be deleted. Instead, consider terms like "opportunity," "connect" and "apply."

Multi-tasking can have its downside, especially when you forget to respond to an email, because you're pulled in another direction by your children moments after reading it. Despite the email system you're using, take advantage of tools that will organize your inbox, whether it's a priority flag, star, or app. Baydin's data indicates that 77 percent of email users who track messages expect a response within two days. Your home office may be chaotic — but there's no reason to let your email recipients know that!

Email conversations have become so common (the average user gets 147 messages a day), that it's too easy to slip into an informal writing style full of incomplete thoughts, typos and grammatical errors. While you certainly don't need to write emails with the formality of a paper letter, remember that all of your communications contribute to your professional image, including email. Always use spellcheck, and keep the musts of journalistic writing in mind when you craft messages, sticking to who, what, when, where, why and how.