5 Tips for Writing Effective Emails

Whether you’re looking to start a business, already running one, or just freelancing for clients, you’re eventually going to have to communicate with someone over email. Using email is a great way to quickly communicate with people all around the world, and has really revolutionised communications. For many people, it’s a common activity and is used frequently in their day to day life.

In the business world, emails are an essential way of communicating with clients, investors, and colleagues. Unlike personal emails to friends, there are some common courtesies and etiquette that should adhere to if you want to come off as professional. In this blog post, we’re going to share with you 5 tips that you can use to start writing effective emails today.

Get to the Point

When writing an email to someone, you’re usually writing the email for a reason. You want something from the person, whether that’s information, to connect with them, set up a meeting, or whatever the case may be. When writing the email, it’s a good idea to get to the point. You don’t have to give long introductions and background stories to them.

They will appreciate you just telling them what you need from them. If they are interested, you can likely share more in person, over the phone, or through a follow-up email. Many people have a knack for sharing their life stories or going so in-depth with things on the first email that it can be quite overwhelming and confusing for the recipient.

Leave a Call to Action

In addition to getting to the point in your emails, it also helps to leave a call to action for the person you’re emailing. One very common mistake people make when writing emails is leaving their recipient not knowing what to do afterwards. It’s basically leaving them thinking something along the lines of “Ok, thanks for sharing that…what do you want from me?”

If no action is required on their part, you can easily let them know that by ending with something like “no reply necessary” or something along those lines. It’s also a good idea to leave links and information that they can easily click or navigate to get more information concerning yourself and/or the subject of the email.

Cut the Slang and Typos

Sometimes I wonder if I even need to list this as one of the tips, but then when I check my inbox, I’m reminded that people actually still do this quite often. Using slang and having typos in personal emails to friends may be alright, but when it comes to talking with clients and dealing with business associates, I’m afraid it just doesn’t cut it.

Slang is one thing, but guys, there isn’t really much excuse nowadays for having typos in your emails. Pretty much every word processor and email client has a spell checker built-in. Make sure you take the time to reread your email before pressing send.

Format the Email

There are a lot of things that annoy me in life. A few of them being things like newly opened bags of chips that are only half full of people who leave shopping carts in the middle of parking spaces. There is also tangled Ethernet cords and wet doorknobs. While those things may only annoy me for the most part, one thing that most people can agree is annoying, is having to sort through walls of text in an email. I seriously know of no one that likes getting emails like this.

When writing emails to people, make sure your email is well-formatted. No one likes having to read through large blocks of text. Along with articles and blog posts, emails should be formatted in a way that allows the recipient to scan or skim the email. This can be done using bullet points, ordered lists, or simply highlighting and bolding text for emphasis.

Don’t Forget to KISS

Before you get confused and weirded out by the heading for this tip, let me just assure you that KISS doesn’t mean what you think it does in this context. In this case, KISS is used as an acronym that stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. This is used often on the internet and is basically a way of saying to keep the length of something short and to the point.

When it comes to emails, you don’t want to make them long and tiring to read. A person’s time is precious to them, taking the time out to read your 4-page long email probably isn’t going to go over too well. This isn’t saying you shouldn’t say what you need in the email, just make sure to keep them as concise as possible. It’s a common courtesy.

Well there you have it, these are 5 of the top tips that you can use today to write better emails that are effective and leave you coming off as a professional. First impressions mean a lot in this world, so making sure yours is a good one will do you a lot of good in the long run.

What are some of your tips for writing effective emails? Share them with us in the comments below!