Millions of emails circle the globe every day. So, you might be thinking, “Oh, writing emails is easy.” True, writing an email is straightforward enough. But, if your message is not clear, it’s a quick trip from the inbox to the recipient’s trash.
Due to the casual approach most people take when writing emails, the message conveyed often gets lost amidst the garble of typos and grammatical errors. How often do you take the time to proof your email before hitting the Send button? Do you know if your message is getting through? If not, try going back to the basics. It is the first step in creating effective emails.
Identify Your Audience
As with any form of writing, to be effective, you must first identify your target audience. The same is true when writing emails. One of the easiest ways to do this is by asking yourself, “To whom am I writing?” Is it a friend or family member? Are you writing to a familiar business colleague or known customer? Do you even know the person who will receive your email? Once you can answer this question, you are ready to decide what voice to use in your email correspondence.
Choose Your Voice
As a writer, when we talk about voice, we refer to the style or manner that we use when writing. Of course, every person has his or her writing voice. It is what keeps life interesting. Yet, it is also this diversity that can be the crux of miscommunication in emails. Why? Well, if you are like most people, you want to write your email as quickly as possible and send it out just as fast. You probably don’t make a conscious effort to ensure that the style of writing you are using is appropriate for the email. It can be a big mistake, but one that you can quickly remedy.
Choosing the correct voice when writing an email is vital to the success of conveying a clear message. It cannot be stressed enough. So, we know our target audience, but now how do we decide what voice is appropriate? For emails, we can keep the choices simple by concentrating on three general styles that work well in most scenarios: casual, semi-formal, or formal voice.
Casual Voice is the most laid back of these three styles of writing (and, unfortunately, the most commonly used by people even when not appropriate). When using a casual voice, your writing style may directly reflect how you speak. You might use contractions and address your email recipient by first name (rather than by title with a surname). Additionally, most formal writing conventions we usually ignore. This style is most appropriate for personal emails to friends or family members.
Semi-formal Voice blends the nonchalant manner of the casual style with just the right amount of assertiveness required by splashes of formality. If you decide to use this style, be careful. Do not get too personal, stay away from inappropriate comments or jokes, and stick to the business of the email message. And, above all, be consistent, continually focusing on the message you want to get across. If you are not comfortable with using a full-fledged formal style of writing, but the content of the email necessitates a more than casual approach, then the semi-formal voice is the perfect choice for you. Semi-formal writing is appropriate for personal emails to friends or family members when discussing topics of a severe or business-related nature. It is also definitely applicable to email exchanges with familiar colleagues in work-related discussions, or when responding to customer inquiries with which a trusted business relationship is already firmly established.
Formal Voice is, perhaps, the most strict of these three voices. It has its own traditional set of standards that you must follow. These standards, or rules, include professional salutations to email recipients (no calling your email recipient by first name here), use of complete sentences, no abbreviations, all words are completely spelt out (meaning no contractions allowed), etc. The formal method of writing is most appropriate for job applications, emails of introduction, discussions of a severe or legal nature, and emails to superiors or subordinates. It is also the safest style to use when the email is of a business (or otherwise severe) nature, and the recipient of the email is not someone who is familiar to you.
Brainstorm, Edit, and Proof the Contents of Your Email
We’ve covered the importance of identifying your target audience and choosing an appropriate writing style or voice. Now it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty of creating the content. If you have a word processing program available, you should consider using it when developing the main body of your email message. Here are some tips for mastering the art of effective email communication:
Brainstorm. Take as much time as you need to develop the idea(s) for your email. You know what you want to say, so write what ever comes to mind. It’s better to have too much information than not enough.
Edit. Once you feel you’ve done all the brainstorming your mind (and typing fingers) can handle, reread what you wrote. As this point, reorganize your information as needed. It is also the time to check your sentence structure. Do not use fragment sentences. Make sure each new idea starts a new paragraph. Within each paragraph, use a combination of short and complex sentences to keep the reader’s attention. Use effective transitional phrases between each paragraph so that the entire message flows smoothly and logically. Once you’ve gone through your initial editing, reread your letter for clarity. Double check misspelt words, proper word usage and grammar and fix theses as needed. Once you are finished editing, if you used a word processing program, then copy the content and paste it into the central composition area of your email.
Proof. It is typically the final (and an extremely important) step for writing effective emails, but don’t confuse it with the edit step. The editing step is where you should spend most of your time while crafting your email (as previously suggested). When you proof, you are mainly skimming the content for apparent typos or small errors that you might miss during the editing phase. And, you are also rechecking other parts of your email to avoid stupid mistakes.
1. Recipient’s Email Address: Check the recipient’s email address for accuracy. One small typo in the recipient’s address can cause the email to be rejected on the other end or even it can go to the wrong person. There is nothing more frustrating than receiving those bounced email notifications or thinking your email reached its destination when, in fact, it didn’t. Why bother wasting time to create an effective email if it never reaches to the person. And, verify the accuracy of any additional recipients you copy (cc) or blind copy (bcc) too.
2. Attachments: If referring to attachments in your email message, make sure that you have actually attached the files. You can look very foolish if you talk about a vital attachment and when the recipient goes to view it, it’s not in the email. Keep the file size of attachments as small as possible. Be careful if attaching files ending in “exe”. The recipient’s email server may reject these as potential virus attachments (even when they are not). Also, respect the wishes of your recipient. For example, if the recipient expressly states that he or she does NOT accept email attachments, do not include any.
3. Subject Line: Write a summary in the subject line of your email. Make it as short and concise as possible. This way, the recipient has an idea of the purpose of your email before they read it.
4. Spelling and Grammar: Most email software programs have a spell and grammar check function. You should use these, especially if copying content from another program into the body of the email. Fix typos and minor grammatical errors (again, proper word usage and major typos or grammatical errors you should fix during the editing stage).
5. Embedded URLs or Hyperlinks: Whenever you type (or copy) a hyperlink (or URL) into the body of your email message, you should make sure that the link is valid. This only takes a few seconds (and helps save the recipient the hassle of trying to deal with dead links). Once you type the link, highlight it, copy it, and then paste it into your browser’s address line. Press the Enter key on your keyboard and make sure that it loads the desired URL (whether it be a file to download, a web page, etc.).
6. HTML or Plain Text Formal: Believe it or not, there are still many people that prefer just plain text emails (or their email software cannot handle any HTML coding within an email). You should determine if the email recipient can (or even wants) to receive HTML or just plain text emails. Then, set your outgoing email options to meet these formatting requirements so your recipient will be able to read your message.
7. Digital Signature: You are writing a letter each time you write an email. So, be courteous and type your name at the bottom of each email message. Whether you include just your first name or your full name with additional title and contact information will depend upon the type of email you are sending. You might consider creating an email signature card that you can use for each email you send (for consistency and ease).
Are You Ready to Press the Send Button?
In today’s often-faceless age of communication, getting the message right the first time is very important, especially in emails. Identifying your target audience, using a proper voice and taking the time to create, edit, and proof your emails is essential. So, don’t be lazy. Keep in mind, also, that just because you may not see the recipient of your message, there is still a human being at the other end. Don’t use the convenience of email to avoid human contact, as a way to personally attack someone, or to spam others. In the latter cases, your email might come back to haunt you, so be conscious of what you write. Once you have carefully considered and applied these effective email writing strategies, press the Send button with confidence knowing your message will be conveyed–loud and clear!