Guide to How to write emails

Ok, so the title is somewhat radical, but ask yourselves the following question:

How many times have you opened an email that someone has sent you and thought (at least) one of the following :

1. Where is the important information in this email?
2. What is this person asking of me?
3. There's no way I'm going to read this, it looks like a novel?

I will bet that everyone who reads this guide will answer "very regularly" to the question above, and I will also guess that many of you will have lost a large amount of time (and therefore money...) sifting through overly-complicated emails and trying to decypher the important information.

This guide gives a few easy pointers to help you and your staff improve email efficiency and skills - actions that can be put into place incredibly quickly (...if you agree with me)

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Think : "objective"

Each email needs a "raison d'etre". Do not write an email unless you absolutely have to. If you need a specific answer from just 1 person then use the phone !

I recommend: Try asking yourself these questions before writing :

1. What is the goal behind my email?
2. Who needs to read my email?
3. What do I want my audience to do once they have read my email?
   

Write down the answer to each of these and you will have your objective.

Subject line must be concise and straight to the point

If you can explain the objective of the email in the subject line (ie why you are writing the email) then you've done half the job already ! It also helps to give a quickly-understandable subject so that your recipients can easily search for the mail if they need to in the future. Keep the subject directly related to the objective.

I recommend: looking at this example :

Bad example :
"We still need to do quite a few things in order to sell our apples and bananas"

Good example
"Selling apples and bananas : remaining actions"

Always keep emails as short as you possibly can

Keep to the point, include nothing that does not absolutely have to be in there with regards to the objective of the mail. Do not elaborate unnecessarily. Avoid superfluous information that will interest no-one with regards to the objective.

I recommend: Getting most of the important information into the first 2 or 3 lines of the mail. This gets your audience on the same radar as you as quickly as possible, concentrated on the shared objective.

Use bullet points to organise information

Don't write paragraphs, synthethise the information with bullets. These are easier for the human eye to pick up quickly upon. If you have important ideas / facts to convey they are much easier to understand if the reader does not have to "search" for them within a long-winded paragraph.

I recommend: having a look at the following example :

Subject = My favourite fruits and colours
(Objective therefore = "to tell my audience what my favourite colours and fruits are")

Bad example :

"I really like apples and bananas, especially the yellow bananas that you sometimes find in the supermarket near my house. My favourite colours are red and green but I dont like blue at all"

Good example :

I like :

• Apples
• Bananas

My favourite colours are :

• Red
• Green

(Note the superfluous info has been removed as it is not central to the objective of the mail)

Refer do a document rather than write everything in the email

If you need to go into detail in order to get your point across then attach a document to the mail and let your audience know that they can find more info there. People prefer to print out a well-formatted PPT or word document rather than trying to decypher email-formatted text.

I recommend:  

Do not be afraid to be (quietly) directive if you need people to action on your email

Obviously, to be treated carefully if hierarchy comes into it. But its better to let people to know what they should be doing once they have read your email rather than leaving them in 2 minds about how they should react (if at all).

I recommend: looking at this example

Subject = "Selling our bananas : remaining actions"

• Buy bananas from local contact : Brian
• Launch communication for bananas : Fred
• Organise banana shipping : Brian

etc

Always be polite

This goes without saying but obviously dont take things to extremes and end up writing like a robot. Keep a polite, friendly tone at all times and do not totally forget the "human touch"

I recommend: