Nine Tips For Writing Emails
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Claudia BNine Tips For Writing Emails
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Claudia B9 Tips for Writing Business Emails People will Respond to Quickly
Marc Cenedella March 28, 2016
You were trying to be nice and pro-active and a little bit earnest when you sent that email but they ignored you again.
What happened? As it turns out, most people get blown off because their emails are a bit rough, try to say too much,
and are a lot of effort to read. This is because most emails ignore the needs of the reader, your audience, and fail to
answer this one simple question: Why should I interrupt work and read your email? Since they don’t teach "Writing
great emails" in college or in companies, I’ve collected 9 tips on writing effective emails to get prompt replies:
1. Your subject line should say why you are sending the email: Putting your name in your subject line will help
the receiver who’s already strapped for time stay organized. Also, providing an unequivocal topic will remind him
why it’s important to read your email. If your email is a reply, you can add your name and topic in front of the
original subject as many people will disregard emails they think are duplicates.
2. Get to the point quickly: Start with the main topic and put all the minutiae into a paragraph later. This is helpful
in our age of small screens since your recipient will probably first see the email on his iPhone, tablet, or Blackberry;
you need to make it easy for him to read it and understand the message while he’s on the go.
3. Use numbers or alpha-bullet points: When you have 8 different points and you list them all in a row, it is very
difficult for your reader to respond in an organized way. Use: 1. 2. 3. or: a. b. c. to break up a dense email, make
your points more clearly, and make it easier to respond to you.
4. Be concise: disseminates everything you need to know about communicating with brevity. To explain just a bit
more: every excess, useless, tedious word you pour into your email makes it more likely that your email will be
ignored, forgotten, or deleted.
5. Use bold sparingly: It’s only to give a power boost to words that you’d like to emphasize but don’t overdo it.
6. Attach with caution: PDFs and MS Docs are pretty standard ways to share reports, with Google Docs becoming
more and more popular. Attachments can get your email caught in spam traps, so sending a link to your attachment
on Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive can soup up the communication.
7. Use two-dollar words: When it comes to your emails, you should avoid long, confusing, "ten dollar" words.
They’re too tough to read and understand. So don’t write: "I collaborated with cross-functional teams to execute
multi-channel media strategies that leveraged best-in-class cross-platform content production facilities generating
optimal audience engagement and retention metrics." When you mean: "I worked with tech to tweet things."
Remember to keep it simple.
8. Make your request clear: When writing back and forth by email, it is very easy for vague words to cause
confusion. Do not use vague words, but rather make salient what you want the reader to do and in what time
frame, by being precise: E.g. "Can you please confirm our phone interview for 2 p.m. on Thursday, April 6th?" In
turn, be very clear about the actions you’re going to take, being as specific as possible.
9. Delete every word that is not absolutely essential: After you’ve written an email, go back through and delete
every word that is not essential as no one has time for verbose emails. E.g., you might replace: "I’m an award-
winning salesman who has proven on numerous occasions to be able to greatly increase the productivity of accounts
in my territory and raise revenue annually." With the much shorter and more meaningful: "Increased company
revenue by 70%." Remember, fewer words means your email is more likely to be read and responded to quickly.
