From SASDocs

Using E-Mail

1. Never send email with a blank subject!
2. Be brief if possible.
3. Install a good anti-virus that scans email as it downloads.
4. Do not automatically think you did something wrong.
5. Using HTML content in email is bad.
6. These are common do’s and don’ts for email: http://webemails.com/junkemail.html
7. Better safe than sorry. Sometimes you can search a site to verify an email address just to be sure it is a real address.
8. Please take a minute to verify that what you just put into the body of this message is what you meant.
9. Sending an email with a blank subject line is one way spammers can bypass some SPAM filters. If the message was not important enough to put a subject on is it important enough to read? By force of habit I often just delete blank subject mail so your message might not get read.
10. Self explanatory. If people are busy the first couple sentences generally give you an idea if reading the whole message is worth while.
11. There are so many Trojans and viruses out there that you really should error on the side of being paranoid. Better that than having us tell you the first step in fixing your machine is erase the hard drive and start over.
12. Newer viruses grab a persons address book and broadcast itself out looking like the address from the address book was the sender. This caused SAS to get many calls about the mailer daemon sending back a message that they were sending out a virus. You did nothing wrong it was just the virus.
13. HTML content has a tendency to trigger a SPAM filter. Think about what that last cute little SPAM mail you got looked like. Also unknown to you there could be an acknowledgement trigger hidden in a picture that notifies the sender the message was received. Now the Spammer has a confirmed address that can be sold or used for other promotions.
14. Lots of places get the same questions.
15. If the email address is an MTU address, then it can be looked up on the www.mtu.edu website (click email addresses on the main page).
16. If you are forwarding a message delete headers and stuff not related to the message. This will save a bit on band width. Proof read your data at least once. The thinking part of the process may have seemed great but what you typed may not be what was meant. If you say you are attaching something make sure you actually did.