How to write business e-mails

Electronic communication is so quick and easy that it’s often the most popular way to contact people. Sending e-mail almost guarantees one will reach ones audience. Many business people travel with their laptop computers and check their e-mail no matter where they are. Indeed, e-mail has revolutionized the business world. It helps us to respond to customers and co-workers. It allows us to communicate at our convenience even at odd hours or far away from us. E-mail can also save valuable time by enabling the front line staff to communicate with executives without going through the formal chain of command.

However, for all its advantages, e-mail has limitations. Keep in mind that nothing beats face to face communication. Electronic communication may be faster and more convenient, but the best way to build a relationship with someone is in person. E-mail cannot convey emotion or tone the way a face to face conversation or even a phone call can. And when you want to send a special message or make a personal impression, consider using pen and paper. The message may arrive several days later, but greater impact it makes the efforts worthwhile.

The fact is that ineffective e-mail can cause outright confusion and loss of productivity. For example, executives who rely heavily on e-mail and avoid personal meetings can lower morale and make employees feel neglected. The best business communicators know the basics of e-mail. They know how to communicate quickly and courteously. They know how to refrain from anything in writing that could come back to haunt them. They also know how important it is to proofread e-mail messages before sending them.

Organizations need their employees to use e-mail in a responsible, businesslike manner. Therefore, many companies actually train employees in the use of e-mail. Most enterprises develop guidelines for effective use of e-mail use. These guidelines set a positive framework for the use of e-mail by making known organizational expectations and policies. They may even help employees reduce unnecessary communications and confusion by defining appropriate e-mail content and use.

A typical e-mail guideline should include the following instructions:

Stick to appropriate content: In most organizations, e-mail is used for sharing information. Electronic messages are not the pace for delivering tragic news or for disciplining people. Such message should be reserved for personal meetings.

Avoid sending personal messages at work: In countless incidents, employees have been dismissed for sending personal e-mail messages that criticized their company, discussed starting a new business or mentioned a new position with another company.

Follow the chain of command: E-mail makes it possible for any employee to communicate directly with any other employee, even the CEO. But one should not abuse the convenience. When correspond ding with the superiors, one should not send a complaint via e-mail straight to the ‘top’ just because e-mail makes it easy to do so. Your mail would be more effective if you follow the organizational hierarchy.

Compose offline: When you are composing an important e-mail message, consider drafting the letter in a word processor and then cut and paste the letter into the body of the e-mail. This way you can spend the time necessary to compose just the message you want but without using up network resources or incurring significant Internet connect charges.

Respect your readers: Common courtesy is an important consideration when sending e-mail. Because, e-mail creates a false sense of intimacy, readers focus is as important in e-mail as in every other business communication. The writing reflects both the writer’s personality and professionalism, so to be among the best communicators, the writer thinks about how his messages affect his various audiences. To be truly respectful and considerate, he (writer) must take extra care to ensure that his message reaches the proper audience, that it addresses his readers in the terms they expect, that it does not waste their time and that it does not impose on them with insensitive material

Send only necessary messages: One of the things that makes e-mail different from other business communication is volume. Survey conducted on a number of companies revealed that executives spend one to two hours daily to handle e-mail. Ten percent of those e-mails are unnecessary and unwanted. So it’s important to do ones best not to add to this information overload.

Know who your audience is: As you consider what to say, also think about who needs to hear it. Then before clicking the send button double check the addresses to make sure that only the intended persons have been included and no one else. An oversight could prevent an urgent message from reaching intended recipient or worse yet, could cause the message to be sent to unintended recipients.

Know the readers culture: In addition to knowing the names and addresses of your readers, make sure you know their culture and language before you begin to compose.

Be clear about time: When sending international e-mail messages, be sure a 24 hour military time format. For example, instead of saying 6.00 pm, say 18.00 hours. Also, be sure to indicate the appropriate time zone such as Eastern Standard Time(EST).

Respect your audience’s schedule: By sending an e-mail message, you’re taking up other people’s time. Be sure not to send jokes, chain letters or derogatory comments.

Don’t flame: An e-mail message that contains in sensitive, insulting, or critical comments is called flame. If you are upset about something or angry with someone compose yourself before composing your e-mail message. If you are fuming give yourself a respite for few hours to cool off before writing your e-mail message. If you have drafted an emotionally charged e-mail keep it in outbox or draft folder for at least for a day to calm down your emotion. Remember at the recipient end there is a live person.

Use the priority feature with care: While assigning a priority feature to your mail as high, normal and low be careful. Remember, such priority simply helps readers decide how quickly to read and respond to your messages. However, if every message is tagged to ‘high priority’, readers will disregards the label and question the importance of the messages.

Create the right tone: Be friendly, smile as you write—your tone shows in your message. It may be tempting to toss around the sort of cyber speak prevalent on the Internet, but be careful. Business e-mail differs from personal e-mail. So leave the ‘cute’ stuff and by all means avoid sarcasm.

Don’t use offbeat acronyms: Acronyms such as BCNU (be seeing you) or IMHO (in my humble opinion) annoy people rather than amuse them. They may be short cut for the writer, but they are not easily interpreted by those unfamiliar with them. Therefore, be clear as far appropriateas possible and avoid cyber shortcut.

Steer clear of smileys and other gimmicks: Rely on the strength of your writing and not on smileys or gimmicks. To communicate you intended message use appropriate tone. Overusing smileys reflects poorly on you any way you look at it. People who are unfamiliar with these notations will not understand them and more experienced readers will label you as an e-mail novice.

Avoid using exclamation points: Many e-mail writers mistakenly believe that they inject life into their electronic writing and elicit reader interest by slapping an exclamation point on every important sentence. One must not fall into this trap. Better use descriptive words and crafting well written sentences.

Cultivate good communication skills: As with other types of business communication, e- mail that contains disorganized ideas, intimidating layout, or grammatically incorrect sentences is a reflection on your organization. Clients often evaluate a company’s capability and dependability based on its written communication, including e-mail.

Keep subject lines truthful: Despite the instant nature of e-mail, it is still necessary to compose a document in it’s true form so as not to mislead the client or his attention from the mail.

Limit the scope of the e-mail message: Each e-mail should have one purpose. If you are to convey more than one purpose, write separate e-mail. This way you can keep the client’s attention to the e-mail. Multiple-topic messages are difficult to retrieve when you need them for reference.

Craft tight, meaningful messages: Cover only what is necessary. Identify the issue, add the relevant facts and present a time table for response.

Write short e-mail messages: Keep your e-mail short whenever possible. People do not like to read more than two to three paragraphs of e-mail. Make sure that you have covered all relevant points in your e-mail. Rely on short sentences. Long sentences are hard to read on screen. They tend to bury the ideas and confuse readers.

Aim for clarity over hype: Remember writing e-mail message is no different from writing other form of business correspondence. However, the mail should be clear and concise and refrain from hype.

Maintain an intelligent appearance: Clarity is the goal of e-mail. So the first step is to avoid a cluttered appearance. Before your readers decipher your message, they must be able to physically read it.

Use an appropriate typeface: Use standard typeface (font size 10 to 12 points) to write your e-mail message so that it looks polished and professional. Never use all capital letters to write your e-mail as it is difficult to read and is being considered yelling. While writing e-mail do not use font lower than standard (font lower than 8). Therefore don’t whisper either. Also avoid double spacing while typing e-mail message.

Make responsible replies: While sending e-mail replies make sure you hit the right reply button so as to send the mail to the recipient intended to. When you choose to “reply to all” do so wisely. While sending e-mail try to understand the meaning of the terms ‘cc’ (courtesy copy) and ‘bcc’ (blind courtesy copy).

Take time to respond: Sending quick e-mail messages full of punctuation, grammar, and spelling mistakes taxes the reader’s patience and lessens credibility. Slow down, take a moment to ask yourself, ‘what am I going to say?’ Jot down the points you want to make and arrange them logically and only then move with the key board. Reread the drafted message, edit the e-mail carefully, correct the misspelled names and avoid knee-jerk reaction.

Handle attachments appropriately: One of the handiest features of e-mail is the ability to attached files to your message. Attachments may be from single page to 200 pages reports. No matter what form the attachments are, consider the recipient’s time, convenience and vulnerability of viruses. Ask permission while sending lengthy attachments. Use compressed files, mention the file name, include summaries, don’t forget to attach your attachment. Be aware of viruses. Manage files effectively. Keep backups. Keep secret your pass world

The writer is former Director General of EPB. He can be contacted at hassan.youngconsultants@gmail.com