Write better e-mails

Read this before you click send again! Good e-mail manner and etiquette creates a reputable image. E-mails should never look like a WhatsApp message to a close friend. It is two different writing and communication styles. Poorly written and non-sensical, unclear e-mails can destroy your personal brand and reputation as well as that of your company.

 General

1.    For business use a professional business e-mail address. Have your name in the address not a generic address like info / md / admin.

2.    Personal e-mail addresses should also have a level of professionalism, try, and stay clear from funny names or ones like thebest@ or bigboss@.

3.    Have separate e-mail addresses for business and personal use.

4.    Confirm the e-mail address of your contact, make sure it is correct, you do not want to send the info to the wrong person.

5.    We all have a lot to do, but take time in preparing e-mails, be thorough. Good e-mail etiquette covers the subject line / salutation / organised thoughts and well-written content / closing of the e-mails in a professional and appropriate manner.

6.     Think about e-mail as modern-day letter writing. Billions of e-mails are sent, and it is a preferred business communication tool.

7.    Do not abuse the tool. E-mailing a colleague who sits 3 doors from you for a hard copy document that you can fetch is not the purpose, neither to send the entire office jokes and quotes. Or start an unsolicited marketing campaign.

8.    E-mails are neither a platform to hide behind when you do not want to talk about a conflicting situation in person.

 Subject Line

1.    Receivers evaluate subject lines for priority or low priority actions.

2.    Be sure your subject line is appropriate and attracts the receiver’s attention. Make it simple but to the point, do not be vague. Servers control whether the receiver will receive the e-mail and with a bad subject line it could get your e-mail in the spam or junk folder.

3.    The subject is the heading or topic or summary of what the e-mail is all about. It needs to be precise and matching the e-mail content. The subject should always be the heading of the content, do not use an old e-mail with a different subject and old content if the new content is different info. Change the subject to fit the content.

4.    E-mails with no subject, mostly go unread.

5.    Do not be manipulative and use subject lines like “Urgent” and “Assistance”, especially if the content is non-related.

 Addressing, salutation and greeting the person

1.    All e-mails should be sent to specific receivers, unsolicited e-mails are not professional. Therefore, all e-mails have a known receiver to avoid greetings like “Dear HR” “Dear Sir / Madam”.

2.    Addressing the reader should always be formal, professional, and sincere.

3.    If it is a first-time e-mail to a new contact, or a new prospect, start with “Attention: Mrs Anne Green, Managing Director, Green Marketing” followed in the next sentence with “Dear Anne, “

4.    Thereafter with known contacts you could always use “Good day Rob,” “Good morning Rob,” “Good afternoon Rob,” “Good evening Rob,” and even with longer term business relationships use “Hello Rob,” or “Hi Rob. “Hiya” and “Hey” are not business e-mail greetings.

5.    Always have a greeting and a name, never just the greeting. A “Hi” on its own is not a professional salutation.

6.    Never start an e-mail and use the name alone with no greeting word, as it implies command or instruction and can be offensive in business communication.

7.    Be careful with the greeting “Dear”, use it sincerely and with caution as this could easily be interpreted as patronising, sarcastic and derogatory if the e-mail content is not in line with the salutation.

8.    In company e-mails the greeting “Hi All” “Hi Everyone” “Hi Colleagues” “Hi Team” is appropriate. Not “Hi Guys” as a collective word for a team it is obviously too informal a greeting and also not accurate for gender correctness, “Hi Ladies and Gents” would be appropriate.

 Introduction

1.    Introduce yourself and your company you represent to new contacts and in the initial e-mail. New contacts would want to know who you are especially if you have not spoken to them or as a reminder of who you are, based on an intro conversation you had. Do not assume the receiver will recognise your e-mail address or remember the introduction or discussion.

2.    Keep it short, introduce yourself by Name Surname, the company you work for and what you do, and the purpose of the e-mail, before asking for anything or introducing services.

 Culture

1.    The world is much smaller since we entered Covid-19. You might be working across borders and in other continents, know the culture and adjust your e-mail to be received in the correct manner.

2.    Also, in different cultures your e-mail may not be read, it could be blocked or deleted if it is a cold e-mail, rather try and call first or connect via a third party or LinkedIn etc.

 To / Reply / Reply All / CC / BCC

1.    Send to is for the main recipient(s) of the e-mail who need to action or be informed.

2.    Reply to the relevant people only. Reply all if all the receivers need to coordinate and be in informed. Do not “reply all” if you need to answer the sender only or if your feedback and answer does not concern the other e-mail receivers.

3.    CC stands for carbon copy, and the function is to keep the trail of the initial e-mail and inform multiple receivers. It is used when an e-mail is sent to people who need to know about the e-mail and are relevant to the content, but do not need to respond.

4.    BCC is to keep private contacts informed who do not have to respond to the e-mail. For instance, if you need to contact a client but your manager also needs to know but will not actively participate in the communication. Another purpose of BCC (blind carbon copy) is to hide the other receivers’ details to protect their privacy when the receivers are all relevant to the content of the e-mail but do not know each other.

 Response time

1.    No-one is expected to be at their e-mails 24/7, however in business, e-mail is a core communication tool. And prompt response is required. This does not include response to unsolicited and spam e-mail. It is good courtesy to reply to an e-mail within 24 to 48 hours of receiving it.

2.    Senders of e-mails could contact you by referral or your reputation, the disappointment is huge if the e-mail is not acknowledged and can affect your reputation.

3.    If you do have a delay, apologise, and move on to the return message.

 Confidential / Private / Appropriate

1.    Confidential / Private / Appropriate is not just who you send information too, but also what information you share in an e-mail.

2.    E-mail content should always be diplomatically correct, legal, and appropriate, thought should be given to what and how we say things. E-mail is stored on servers and is always accessible even if you deleted it. Think about an e-mail that was leaked and then sent into public domain or distributed in the company or e-mails used in investigations, e-mails just like WA messages and SMS’s can be found if it is required.

3.    Consider what you write in an e-mail, you should always feel comfortable with what you wrote as if it can be posted on a public platform.

 Writing style

1.    Written e-mails do not have emotions, body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions, that an in-person conversation would have. Therefore, the written language is your only way of communication and should be harnessed in a way that will build engagement and rapport.

2.    To create rapport with the receiver, address the person directly, stay factual and sincere in the content and body of the e-mail, end the e-mail in a manner that is professional. If you know the person, write in a way that will “speak” to that person. The style should reflect the person you are writing to, warm, friendly, very business-like, formal, to the point, conservative, creative etc.

3.    Building and retaining professional relationships with colleagues and clients require polite, respectful, and positive written interactions.

4.    Jokes and sarcasm can be misread, and the content of the e-mail could be missed, or the contact could be offended.

 Font

1.    Use your default setting on your e-mail, if you want to change ensure it is plain and easily readable. Calibri, Arial, Century Gothic.

2.    Stick to the default colour font, black and dark grey text on a white background is preferred, the others are not always professional or readable.

3.    Use sentence case.

 Neat and structured body

1.    Clean the e-mail up. An organised and structured e-mail will be received positively. Write logically and easy to read. Use various methods to structure the e-mail body neatly, like bullet point, numbering, highlight key points and spaced paragraphs.

2.    The e-mail should look good and be sensible. Write conservatively, people do not want to read a book in an e-mail, they will feel overwhelmed. Get to the point asap.

 Mood

1.    Keep e-mails neutral or positive. Never write an e-mail when you are angry or want to reprimand someone or want to vent about a person or are disappointed. The written word is said, and it cannot be taken back, it is written forever.

2.    Writing e-mails in capital letters, in bold and in red with many exclamation marks and underlined implies in written interpretation, anger, shouting, fighting, conflict, disagreement, disappointment. Use all this sparingly or rather not at all. It is perceived negatively.

3.    Never be negative in an e-mail. A negative or offensive e-mail can create an uneasy or permanently damaged relationship between you and the receiver.

4.    If a conflict situation or disagreement needs to be addressed on e-mail provide the facts, sequence of events, keep it short and use constructive criticism, and suggest a solution, do not make it personal, solve the problem. Use neutral words and only state the facts, take the emotion out of the e-mail.

5.    If it is a very tense matter / subject, about someone else or negative feedback, rather communicate in person or telephone. E-mail is not the correct tool for this.

6.    Try to use negative words or words in a negative connotation sparingly i.e., non-negotiable, not at all, never ever, cannot, mistakes, issues, concerns, failure, incompetent, delay, slow, problem, situation, crisis, trouble, unfortunate, consequence, surely, obviously.

 Punctuation, Spelling and Grammar

1.    Always proofread before you send. Write the e-mail, read it through for correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation. And if you need to, wait 10 minutes, and reread it again.

2.    A badly written e-mail will affect your reputation and you will not be taken seriously. Writing correctly and professionally in business is a core responsibility and skill. 

3.    If this is a weak point, upskill with a Udemy course on grammar, spelling and punctuation.

4.    Also consider and download tools like Grammarly or Editor that you can use to ensure your writing is professional.

5.    Know how to use punctuation properly. Period (.), comma (,), question mark (?), hyphen (connects to words -), dash (used in a sentence of words for a pause -), underscore (_), parentheses (used to begin parenthetical text - also called curved brackets), apostrophe ('), ellipsis (...), colon (:), semicolon (;), exclamation mark (!).

6.    Be clear about commonly confused words, spelling and word meaning like these common errors: Proof / Prove; Belief / Believe; Accept / Except; Affect / Effect; Their / There; Loose / Lose; Too / To; A Part / Apart; Passed / Past; Lead / Led; Stationary / Stationery, etc.

 Proper language and word use

1.    Business e-mails are professionally written, and proper phrasing, using full words and full sentences are required. The tone of the e-mail is enforced with professional language.

2.    Do not use slang or words written in shorthand or in a manner more applicable to a texting tool like WA for instance “K” for Okay not even OK, is not acceptable. Same for these examples, “It was nice to meet u.” “Gr8, see you soon.”

 Attachments

1.    Refer to the attachments in the e-mail. Explain the purpose of the attachments. Be considered and send a maximum of 2-3 attachments, keeping size in mind that will not delay or block the recipient’s e-mail. The attachment name should be clear, not something like “Doc 1” and it should be relevant to the content of the e-mail.

2.    Images are mostly blocked by servers, rather do simpler formats for attachments like Word or PDF.

3.    If your attachment is blocked by the server, rather request the receiver grant permission to send or send the receiver a dropbox or similar link to the content.

 How to use Emojis

1.    Emojis in business e-mails should be a NO!

2.    Emojis are text communication methods and not appropriate for business e-mails, it could be perceived as immature, unprofessional, and inappropriate and more so with new contacts in a first communication e-mail.

3.    Emojis could send your e-mail to the sender’s spam or junk folder.

4.    In saying this one emoji, in a business e-mail with a well-known contact could be appropriate and relevant ??.

 Closing the e-mail

1.    Always suggest when an action / response is needed or inform your contact that no action or response is required.

2.    “I am requesting a zoom meeting” “RSVP” “Please reply at your earliest convenience” “Please forward me the requested documents soonest” “Please respond soonest” or “No reply is necessary” “Thanking you in advance” “I will follow up with you soonest” “Please indicate that you have received this e-mail” “See you at the morning zoom meeting” “Please let me know if I may be of further assistance.” “Looking forward to hearing from you,”

3.    And then close with professional writing “Kind Regards,” “Warm Regards,” “Best Regards,” “Sincerely,” “Thank you” etc.

4.    This will prevent e-mail returns saying “OK” “Thanks” etc. which is not relevant to a conversation. Please do not respond like this either.

5.    And your professional signature with your contact, company, and social media details. The information a recipient needs to reach you other than on e-mail.

 OOO E-mails and Replies

1.    OutOfOffice (OOO) for when you are not available, i.e., when you are on leave or will not be able to respond for a period or are out of reach.

2.    Refer senders to contacts in you company or alert them when you will be back to read and respond to e-mails.

 When to call and not e-mail

1.    When a complex matter needs discussion, an e-mail might not be the right tool for such communication or explanation, it might need a call, a presentation, or an online video meeting. Complex information will create questions and need detail, best be available to address it directly rather than question / explanatory e-mails backwards and forwards. This could lead to misunderstandings.

Improve your e-mail writing. Good e-mail writing will help you make a good impression in business and with colleagues and clients. And new prospective client will most definitely decide on your professionalism based on your e-mail writing skills.

PERFORMABILITY is a boutique Recruit | Train | Coach | HR Support agency.

Our values are simple. Providing you with the ability to perform.  Think BIG ethos | Commitment | Courage | Continuous Improvement |