Effective communication is an essential aspect of productive working relationships with colleagues and clients alike. In the modern age, technology plays a major role in this communication and emailing is one of the cornerstones of business communication. It’s therefore imperative that your business emails are concise and clearly communicate your thoughts and ideas, while still being easy to understand and professional. This may seem like a tall order, so here are our top tips on writing better business emails.
Keep Emails Concise
While you may have a lot of thoughts and ideas that need to be communicated in a single message, try and keep the email as short as possible. Unlike in the world of online dating, in a fast-paced business environment, people don’t have time to read chatty, wordy and long emails, but it’s often important that they do in order to keep up. As such, it’s important that you keep the information detailed, but still sparse enough that it doesn’t come across as an essay.
Don’t Ignore the Subject Line
The subject line is one of the most important factors of your email as when opening one’s inbox and seeing the unread emails, it’s helpful to know exactly what the communication is regarding. In this way, when faced with a large amount of new emails, the recipient can scan through the subject lines and decide which emails take priority. Don’t waste your subject line, but rather effectively communicate what your email is regarding. For example, “Top paying online slots Australia!”
Keep Topics Organised
While business emails should preferably be kept concise, this isn’t always possible and you may find yourself needing to impart large amounts of information in a single message. When it comes to longer business emails, keep the topics organised and make use of headings, bullet points, and shorter sentences to make the most of the message. The recipient of the email should ideally be able to scan through your email quickly to find the information most relevant to them.
Be Friendly and Professional
Tone is particularly difficult to impart over text and can quickly be misinterpreted if you’re not careful. When it comes to business emails, one should always remain professional, but still warm and friendly. This is a delicate juggling act, especially when talking to the boss, but ultimately practise makes perfect. Start your email with a warm greeting and always sign off with more than just your name – for example, “Have a great day further” and your name. While emoticons are typically used to communicate tone, this is a big no-no when it comes to business emails and will make you come across as unprofessional.
Proofread More than Once
In order to be taken seriously in the business world, you need to have an excellent grasp of language and people will likely judge grammatical and spelling mistakes harshly. In order to avoid making embarrassing mistakes, proofreading all emails more than once before hitting ‘send’ is critical, especially when it comes to sensitive business emails. Make sure you’ve spelled the recipient’s name correctly and that your grammar and spelling is as close to perfect as possible.