Email writing is art. It might take practice or you could be a natural. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that emails are a form of communication by writing. Writing skills and the ability to understand formalities is important when it comes to business email. In this article, you will read a plethora of information on composing an email in various different scenarios and conditions.
There are a few key steps to follow in business email writing.
1. Know your audience
Whether you are drafting an email to a friend, composing a professional email to a CEO, or doing market research, it is key to know your target audience and their personality at a high level.
2. Type in your email subject
The email subject should be kept concise and should cleverly brief what the email body is about. Often it is the subject of your email that serves as the determining factor for anyone to open and read your message.
Sometimes, I prefer going ahead with the email body and then getting into writing the subject.
This allows me to craft the email subject with extra precision since I know what the message entails. This in turn allows me to get into the shoes of the reader. Hence, I realize what would make me read this message.
3. Write the body
This is the meat of your email.
Email Salutation
The first and foremost rule to follow is to always have a salutation. This is an addressing to the recipient(s) of the email.
e.g.:
- Dear Sir or Madam
- To whom it may concern
- Dear All
- Dear <Name of the Person>
- Hi <Name of the Person>
If you want to add a bit of a jovial mood in, don't hesitate to slide in a Hello or a Hey.
Greeting or the Opener
Once that is done, kick-off by greeting your recipient. If it is an introductory email, here are some potential greetings that you could employ the use of:
Hope you are well! Allow me to introduce myself.
Hope this email finds you well. I'm reaching out about...
Good morning! I want to get in touch with you about...
Content
Next, acknowledge the reason for writing your email. The body should be easily digestible. Keep it concise. However, there are occasions where your email needs to have lengthy descriptions.
In this case, structure it into bullet points or sub-headings. Write the nitty-gritty under the respective bullet point or the subheading.
Don't be scared to use a fair amount of formating and beautification. By this, I am not advising you to make it look like a color museum - since this, after all, is a professional email.
The purpose of formatting is to make content scannable to the human eye. In other words, formatting makes it easier for the user to get an idea of the content, even by glancing at the email body.
Here are some techniques I use in my day to day life as a business analyst:
- Bold Text - This is used for a strong emphasis on the text. This will capture the reader's attention, as a keyword.
- Italic Text - to define terms that may sound like technical jargon in your field, a title, a foreign word, or a quote from somewhere else.
- Underlining - Underlining, in my personal opinion, should be kept at a minimum since it is common to mistake this for a hyperlink. I use this only when I run out of options, after already employing the use of bold, italic, and bold-italic text in the email for different contexts.
- Yellow highlight - Again, a highlight is meant to emphasize some portion of the message. I use yellow highlighted text if my email is too long (due to unavoidable circumstances) and there's some important text also placed at the bottom of the email - which I know this email's recipient might miss if not for the yellow highlight.
Having your grammar, spelling, and punctuation on point is an important part of a professional email. Human errors happen and it is acceptable. However, today's world has a solution to almost every problem. Doesn't it? So, to be an English champ, there is a user-friendly, easy tool to use. This by name is, Grammarly.
Grammarly scans the text you write and identifies any spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, and missing or additional punctuation that could be removed or corrected. Isn't that simply awesome?
So, if you are not using it already and you are targeting to be a professional, please have a look at Grammarly. It also has a web browser extension that you can easily add to your browser.
4. The email closing.
Last but not least, add a touching closing.
e.g.:
- Cheers - is friendly, conversational, and undemanding.
- Best regards - this is more formal than cheers. So this can be used when you want a hint of extra formality.
- Warm regards - I believe warm regards gives a very personal and emotional touch to an email.
- Thanks in advance - this should be used if you expect a reply back or some action to be performed after the recipient(s) read your email.
- Many thanks - this is great to use when you want to express gratitude
More Tips on Writing Formal Emails
A big NO-NO when it comes to writing formal emails is the use of acronyms or shortened slang (such as GM, TTYL, Rgds). Since a formal email is meant to be professional, it's your duty to make it not sound like a conversation on a chat application.
Always proofread your email message. There could be subtle things you can change, improve, or correct. After all, Grammarly is a piece of software. Human touch is important.
Don't overuse exclamation marks or capitalization. Your recipient might read this as being rude or arrogant.
Avoid using strings of letters or punctuation such as "That's greaaaattttttt!!!!!". This ain't deemed professional.
Don't give place to your angry emotions. It is important not to let your emotions speak too much in business email writing. In a work environment, it is quite common that you are writing an email at a client who got mad over nothing, a reply to an angry customer, unreasonable comments from a coworker. These are situations that may arise but it is important to not take things as such personally.
Follow The BA Journal on Pinterest! There is an entire board of emailing tips & tricks and a collection of beautiful words that can be used in a professional email.
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