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How to Write Effective Emails? Tips and Best Practices

Written by: Alex Revai

Article Overview: Email is a fantastic tool. Why is it then, that we curse it? Why is it that we have become slave to it? It fills our email inboxes. It drives our days. It saps our productivity. Could the problems be self-inflicted? Regrettably, often, they are. Let's look at a few emailing best practices, which should help in harnessing the email as a valuable tool, rather than a necessary Evil.

How to Write Effective Emails? Tips and Best Practices

The task of changing the world, as it were, starts with us: "Don't do to others..."

A good email should have a subject line that summarizes your message

People often scan their inbox by the subject. Make your subject line concise, but complete enough so that your readers can decide whether it's relevant. Never send an email with a blank subject line!

The absolutely worst thing to do: You want to write an important (perhaps even urgent) note to person X. You grab the first email from this person that you located in your inbox. It bears a subject line (if any), which has nothing to do with the message you are about to send. You just hit "Reply" and start clicking away. The subject line might have said "Thanks" and you wrote in the body of the email "I urgently need the July monthly report". Would you jump to open an email, which says "Thanks", when you have 50 other email you haven't opened yet?

Give your reader full context at the start of your message

Start off your messages with enough context to orient your reader. Avoid short, yes/no responses to messages, which may deal with several topics. If there were numbered or bulleted questions/issues, respond to them in the same fashion.

Make action requests clear

If you want things done, say so, clearly. The email should only be addressed "to" the person, whom you wish to act (or will hold accountable). Copy (cc.) those, who must know about it. Summarize action items at the beginning of the message. What? Who? By When? This way everyone can read (and understand) clearly what, if anything, they are expected to do. If there is only one requested action, it's best to write it directly in the Subject line. Often, that could be the entire email.

Edit messages before forwarding

Don't automatically forward any email without editing it. Make it appropriate for the ultimate recipient and make sure it doesn't get the original sender in trouble. Delete all unnecessary history from your forwarded message. Subject lines, which look like this "Fw:Fw:Fw: blahblahblah" loose their relevance.

Further Tips and Suggestions:

• Before sending an email ask yourself, would I mind seeing this on the front page of a newspaper?
• If it's a sensitive issue, work out the problem face to face. Pick up the phone or walk over the person.
• Don't reply to an email in a bad mood or when angry. Count to 10. Then, count to 20.
• Write in clear, plain and grammatically correct English. (In the age of Twitter, this may be too much to ask...wink-wink)
• Take time to write good emails. Fast, reactive email will lose its meaning and/or may offend someone.
• Be concise! Too much information can be a burden for people to read.
• Only send email to the people who need it. Don't send it to 10 other people just because you can. Avoid the CYA habit.
• Email should be brief; longer documents should be attached.

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  How to Write Effective Emails And Drive Traffic

Article Tags: best email practices, email tips, most important line in email, productivity, writing effective emails



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Business Tips - How about: Tips for managers to handle employees more effectively? Tips on how to deal with difficult customers? Tips on how to deal more effectively with suppliers? The only three I have in mind right now, but will try to come up with something else. Chris
Re: Quote of the Day - "Have the courage to follow your heart an - [quote="GT Bulmer":102twzd2]Hi, Evan: I haven't yet managed to capitalize on the longings of my heart as successfully as Jobs did[/quote:102twzd2] Hi GT - I woke up thinking about this post and I have a challenge for you for May if you're up to it. Here it is: Write the blog post / article you were born to write. Write something that you can pour your heart and all your passion into. Write something where you can change the life of the person reading it. Write something where if you look back in 10 years you'll be really proud of what you created. Can you do that? I'd love to read it (and I bet a lot of others will too!)
Re: Awesome Resource: Instapaper - So far the only thing I use the filters for is to send all the safelist emails I get to a folder. It currently has over 386,000 emails in it. This is a really good tip though. I need to start utilizing it. Emails eat up too much of my time right now.
Re: Awesome Resource: Instapaper - [quote="billgelwick":3jk3d6mn]This is a really good tip though. I need to start utilizing it. Emails eat up too much of my time right now.[/quote:3jk3d6mn] It's probably the biggest single productivity issue for most entrepreneurs!
Re: Do Articles For Businesswomen need to be written differently - I don't think that as a general rule an article [i:11csddi3]needs[/i:11csddi3] to be written "for women." In my opinion, the two important writing rules are: 1) Write for your targeted audience. If it happens to be predominantly women or predominantly men, then write accordingly (if you have the ability to make that distinction in your writing). 2) Write in your own voice. Be natural. If you are a serious writer, your style will become apparent over time and you will develop a following. It may happen that your style is more attractive to one sex or the other. If so, you may be able to advance your writing career by further cultivating your sensitivity within that style. Bottom line: I do believe that certain styles appeal to women, certain styles appeal to men and if you know the distinction, have the ability to write in a particular style and choose to target one sex or the other, then go for it. But I don't think that it is a necessity in today's market. GT :-]


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