How To Craft An Effective Email

Crafting an effective and cohesive email sounds easy to do, yet I’m sure all of us have had our fair share of email miscommunications. Had we taken a bit more time to write the email, the confusion could have likely been avoided. Every workplace has that one person that just put the right words together in an email if their life depended on it. That person may even be you. Here are 5 tips that will help you become an email writing master!

1. Utilize the Subject Line to convey the main topic of your email in five words or less. Don’t leave the body of the email blank and expect the text in your subject line to be effective. Doing this may get you the response you want, but you also risk frustrating or confusing your recipient.

1. Have a Topic Hierarchy to organize the more important parts of your email for your recipient. Most people will skim through longer emails and miss some important details.Having your important topics in the first few sentences will help ensure they are seen and addressed than if they were deeper in a lengthy email.
2. Be Concise when crafting your email. Try to write brief sentences to communicate your thoughts.  This avoids confusion and ensures your email is read as it should be. Short sentences will help reduce the time it takes to write, read and reply to emails.
3. Have an Effective Signature that at the minimum says who you are, has a good phone number to contact you by, and your business name and title if using your work email.
4. Review Your Email before sending it. Check your “To” field to make sure the email is going where it should. This is very important if you have a long recipient list, as you might have some typos. Read your email to make sure everything makes sense and flows well. Use spell check and grammar check to catch any embarrassing mistakes and make any necessary changes.

We strongly feel if you follow these 5 tips before sending out an email that you’ll have a much more productive communication with others and an overall less frustrating day.