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When you’re traveling for business make sure clients and colleagues can get in touch with you by creating an automatic response message for your email:

• Stay professional. You don’t want clients to think that you’re partying in Vegas even if that’s where your business happens to be.

• Explain briefly why you’re away. If you’re on business for a special promotion, this can be a promotional tool to let people know about it. Otherwise, mention that you’re in transit for business and will be unavailable until you’ve reached your other office location.

• State realistically when a response can be expected. If you’ll be checking e-mail while away, say when. If not, provide a date of return. Then make sure to keep your credibility by replying to all email by then.

• Provide an alternative means of contact. This is optional and depends on if you want to be reached but a phone number or other means of contact could be a good way to keep business flowing while you’re on the road.

• Double-check it. Make sure there are no typos. Double-check that you’ve set the date correctly and marked it “on” so it works. Make sure you’ve got it set on all accounts that you use. Then send yourself a message to be sure that it works.

Remember to consider your own safety when leaving this automatic message. If you work from home or your clients have any reason to know where you live, you might not want them to know that you’re away from your home for an extended period of time. Consider leaving a more generic automatic response or using a push-email-to-phone function instead.

Tags: Business Travel | email