Business Writing (part 2)
In my last post on business writing (part 1), I spoke about the importance of keeping things simple, being informal, direct, and personal with your readers. Now since most of us use the internet for writing letters, let’s go over some points on writing effective emails.
As an entrepreneur you probably don’t have a lot of time to write those long emails. If you’re like me, you probably write around 10+ emails on a typical day.
Here are some techniques that I use to write emails:
SUBJECT: Remember to clearly state your reason for the email in the subject field of the letter. This usually determines if your letter will be opened or sent off to the spam box, so take some time to really consider what you’ll put there. I usually add my name and the main focus of my email. Something like this: “David Askaripour: Business meeting today @ 4.”
It’s simple and the recipient could potentially not even open the letter and still get my message about our meeting.
BE PRECISE: Make sure to get right to the point in your email. Email isn’t like normal mail when people open the envelope, sit down, relax, and actually take the time to read your letter. Sending mail online has created a world of split second decisions in the minds of your readers, if your email doesn’t have your points clearly stated in the beginning of your letter, then it’ll take a second for your reader to click on the delete button.
Feel free to use bullets to layout all of the vital information, it can be very effective and allow your reader to scan everything in one shot as opposed to reading your email line for line.
SHORT: Like any other writing on the internet, you want to keep your writing short with small paragraphs (7 lines or less), especially when it comes to writing emails. Break your points into sections; don’t bunch them all into one long paragraph.
SPELLING: Before you hit that send button make sure to spell check your letter, always. None of us are perfect and miss spelling errors from time to time (I’m guilty), but really try and correct everything as best as you can.
If you come off as a person who doesn’t care about the quality of your message, then what do you think people will think about the way you manage your actual business? So take the extra few minutes to make everything perfect, it’ll payoff in the end.
Share your comments with us – what methods do you use for writing effective emails?
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