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 just 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. This 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 message for clarity. Double check misspelled words, proper word usage and grammar and fix as needed. Once you are finished editing, if you used a word processing program, copy the content and paste it into the main composition area of your email.
Proof. This is typically the final (and an extremely important) step for writing effective emails, but don’t confuse it with the edit step. The edit 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 obvious typos or small errors that might have been missed during the edit phase. And, you are also rechecking other parts of your email to avoid stupid mistakes.