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5 Tips for Writing Effective Emails

Although email has been in use for a few decades, many people still don’t know how to write effective email messages. Even with all of the social channels we communicate with today, email is still the most widely used electronic communication method for business. With the overwhelming number of messages many people receive it can be tempting to ignore emails or hastily dash off a quick reply. However, following a few simple best practices can make a big difference in the effectiveness of your emails. Here are five easy tips that will help you write better emails.

1. Reply quickly
Determine your response time frame standard and do your best to stick to it. For some people responding within 24 hours is their target, for others it’s more or less time. When something is important, reply quickly. You should not need to continually check your email every few minutes to ensure a quick response, but you should determine your definition of a timely response and schedule your email processing times to make sure you can meet our own expectations.

2. Short is sweet
Twitter, Facebook and other social channels have taught us to communicate with few characters. Just because email allows more words does not make it effective to write lengthy emails. In general it is best to keep emails to under 150 words. Longer emails increase the likelihood that your recipients will only skim or entirely ignore your message. If there is a good reason you must send a longer email, include a brief summary at the beginning and inform your recipient(s) if there is an action required.

For example:
Smith project status meeting recap below. Please review and approve attached contact by 1/26.

3. Be concise
Be direct and make your point with as few words as possible. Resist the urge to include unnecessary adverbs, adjectives and other filler words.

Which sentence is more effective?

Be concise.
– or –
It is a good idea in most cases not to add a lot of unnecessary additional words that make your sentences very long and make your emails excessively lengthy.

4. Proofread
Make sure your email communicates your intention by rereading it before sending, checking the content and the form. Sometimes it is helpful to reread out loud. Ask yourself, does the tone accurately convey your message? Can you make it shorter? Are there errors? Spellcheck is handy, but doesn’t catch everything, especially if you are using acronyms or uncommon words; you still need to check for grammar and punctuation errors. Rereading will also help prevent the common mistakes of too hastily sending incomplete thoughts or forgetting to include necessary attachments.

With particularly sensitive emails, you might want to save your draft then reread and edit it a little later with fresh eyes, or ask a colleague or supervisor to reread. The shorter you’ve kept your messages the easier they will be to reread.

5. Check the address
Most of us have had the experience at some point of accidentally sending an email to an unintended recipient. Sometimes this can have serious consequences. This risk increases if you’ve set your email program to autofill the address line. I will never forget the time many years ago when I had just started a new job and I mistakenly emailed my new boss a personal message intended for a family member (their names started with the same three letters). I realized the moment after clicking ‘send’ that autofill had put in my manager’s name not the one I’d intended, but it was too late. I learned from this mistake that no matter how much of a hurry I’m in it is important to double check the recipient addresses, especially for any email that is particularly important or confidential. One way to help ensure that your emails go to the intended audience is to write, edit and reread them first, then address them last.

Stay tuned for more tips on improving email. In our next two posts we will review email etiquette and share some tools that help people write emails with impact.

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