4 Tips for Crafting Better Emails

4 Tips for Crafting Better Emails

An average office worker indeed receives around 120 emails per day. This is a clear indication that offices highly rely on emails as their necessary means of communication. So, every email sent should be written appropriately to pass the message as intended while remaining collegial. Effectively written emails help share the intended information and save time for both the sender and the receiver.

According to Jonathan Osler, email marketing is an excellent way to promote a business and generate valuable leads. But if it isn’t used in the proper manner, it can highly cost the business’ potential customers. With that in mind, here are the top four tips that every effective email shouldn’t miss.

1. Let The Subject Line Tell It All

As the newspaper headline does, an email’s subject line should grab the reader’s attention. It should be a summary of the message in the email. This will help the recipient to decide whether to read the email or not.

It is also very easy for a blank subject line email to get overlooked or even to get thrown into the spam folder. But an email with a well-crafted subject line can easily grab your recipient’s attention.

Also, if the intended email is among a series of emails like a weekly project report, it is advisable to include dates on the subject line. A call to action is also critical for emails that require a certain response. An example of this call to action can be, “please reply by October 30th.”

A professionally-written subject line delivers the required information to the recipient even before they open the email. This can play as a prompt that reminds them about a certain action like a response, meeting, or any other event whenever they open their mail inbox.

2. Keep Your Emails Short and Don’t Mix-Up Your Content

Let every email address one content area. If, for example, the email is about a particular event with a colleague, it is advisable to include the event in a specific email. When the content of the email is mixed up, it will be very hard to search for a particular email.

Also, effective emails should be kept as short as possible. As far as the email has communicated the intended message, leave them at that point. No recipient has all the time to go through a 12-paragraph email, no matter how important it might be to them.

3. The Tone is Key

It might be challenging to assess the tone of an email, but in most cases, readers assign a tone to emails, even unintended. So, email senders must avoid the use of inflammatory words or exclamation marks.

4. Be Polite

As Jonathan Osler points out, people usually think that emails are less formal as compared to traditional letters. But the coded messages in the emails reflect one’s professionalism and values—so the highest level of politeness and formality is required.

Unless the sender knows the receiver inside-out, they should be clear of informal languages, jargon, slang, or other inappropriate abbreviations. Although emotions can be important for intent clarification, they are much more impactful when targeted to familiar individuals.