9 ways to Make your work emails more effective
Love it or loathe it, there is no escaping email in the work environment. It can be a great tool if used well, but can also lead to confusion, angst and anger if you’re not careful.
No matter how much you try to head off the email barrage, you’ll still have to use them every day in some capacity or other. How can you avoid the pitfalls that others fall in to and make your emails clear, to the point, but also write them in a way that doesn’t get people offside when they read them.
Thankfully, a few simple pointers can make a big difference. These might seem like no-brainers, but a refresher can’t do you any harm.
What’s it for?
After asking yourself if you really need to send the email and decided that you do, then the most important first step is to decide what you want it to do.
Ask yourself:
What do I want the outcome to be? Do I want someone to do something for me or find information for me? Do I want someone to set up a project? Do you want to clarify actions from a meeting?
You know the drill. Understanding what the purpose of the email is will go a long way to making it effective.
Who do you need to send it to?
If it’s more than one person, you need to understand how much each of these people knows or understands what you are talking about. One person may be very familiar with the topic while others might only be on the periphery.
This is where the cc. line comes in. It should be used to send the email to people who need to know what is going on, but don’t need to take any action. A lot of people file emails they are cc’d in without looking at them. They work on the understanding that if you want them to do something or are directly involved, you would have included them in the To: field. If you think about this as a workflow that you adopt, people will get used to your conventions and know that if they receive and email from you and they are in the To: field, they have to do something with it. If you keep sending things to people and have them in the To: field all the time when they don’t need to be, you are increasing their frustration which will ultimately reflect on you.
The subject line
After your name, this is the first thing people see. It generally shows up in the summary pane of your email app. It makes sense that you get this right. You can adopt conventions such as prefacing the subject detail with:
• Urgent
• Action required
• For approval
• For Information
• Your help please
But please don’t use block capitals (in fact never use block capitals) unless you want people to assume you are shouting at them.
You could also colour code emails, but the people you are sending them too will need to know the convention you are using. This probably only works when sending emails to your direct team.
The salutation and opening
Getting this right is critical.
Your salutation is also something that you should consider carefully. There are so many ways to open an email but it depends on who you are writing to. For example:
• If you are writing to the Board of Directors, you could start “Dear Board Members.”
• If you are writing to your own team or a project team, you could use “Dear team,” or “Hi team” depending on your preferred style — formal or informal. This would typically be to a group that you know well.
• If you are writing to a broad group, “Dear colleagues” or simply “Colleagues” is a good catch all.
• The use of “Hi…” or “Dear…” would differentiate between informal and formal communication in the sense that if you know the people well in the group you are sending to, then it’s perfectly acceptable to use the informal greeting.
• If you are only writing to a few people (three or less) I would tend to use their names. For example: “Hi Amanda, John and Kevin,”
Then start with a clear statement about the purpose of your email.
For instance, you could say:
“Following our meeting this morning, I would like to clarify the actions we agreed and the delivery timetable.”
Or
“I have been asked by <my boss> to submit a report on our activity from the last month. I need your help to compile this please.”
You get the idea. Set out up front what the purpose of the email is. You can still have a conversational tone depending who you are sending it to, but be clear.
The body content
The receiver of your email with thank you profusely if you have set out the requirements of what you are asking for in a clear, logical way with expected outcomes and delivery times. It saves them having to second guess what you are looking for.
Be as clear as you can be. For instance:
• If necessary, set out what the outcome is you are looking for. Is it a report, information, presentation etc.? If it’s not clear from your introduction, clarify why you need it done.
• Be specific about what you expect to see from the action? Do you need all the background information or are you looking for a one-page summary? Do you need to see an updated milestone report before the next executive meeting?
• Set clear timelines/deadlines when you need it done by.
The closing
Be courteous. Unless you have a reputation as a hard-ass (and if you are reading this I hope it’s because you want to find your ‘softer’ side), being courteous will win you friends who will be happy to help you.
One very effective closing statement is to say:
‘Thank you in advance’. It’s almost compelling people to help you and has been proven in a study to be the most effective way to end your email if you want people to help you.
Auto-signatures
One of the most annoying things I find is when people are too lazy to even type their closing remark and their name. They simply have it as part of the auto signature, and it’s the same every time. I find it quite disrespectful if people can’t take the 3 seconds to type:
“Regards, Alistair” at the end of the email.
Don’t do it. It’s only a few seconds and it will let you finish on the correct tone. There are plenty of endings to choose from:
• Thanks — fairly obvious and relatively informal, especially if you are asking the recipients to do something.
• “Kind regards” or “Regards” — this is probably the most widely used sign-off phrase. It’s not too formal but not too friendly either. It keeps things business-like.
• “Cheers” — obviously an informal sign-off and only used to people you know well. It’s friendly in tone and is becoming quite widely used. I would only use this internally, never on emails to suppliers or customers (unless you are best friends of course).
• “Yours sincerely (faithfully)” — Very formal and used when the email is a formal record or statement. The salutation must have begun with a formal “Dear Mr Smith” or “Dear madam”. The rule is you use ‘sincerely’ if you have addressed the person by name in the salutation, or ‘faithfully’ if it is a generic “Dear sir” type salutation.
The golden rule
Don’t send an email in anger or when you are upset. I’ve heard so many instances of ‘car-crash’ emails being sent before the sender has thought about what they want to say, especially if it’s done as a reaction to something. Sure, there is a place for the ‘direct and to-the-point’ email, but if it’s done in a fit of anger, it will probably be written in a way that just makes things worse.
My tactic for this is simple. Draft an email (with no-one in the addressee box in case you hit the wrong button) and let it sit there for at least an hour. Go to a meeting, go for a coffee…do anything you want except stew in front of the computer looking at it. That break will let you have some reflection time and when you get back, re-read the email and make sure it’s going to have the outcome you want. Chances are that you’ll want to change a few things. The emotion will be diluted and you’ll have a more rational response. You might even think that you don’t need to send it at all. I know I’ve done that a few times.
Once I’ve had time to take the emotion out of it, I realise that the email won’t actually make the situation any better. So, I binned it. I’ll speak to the person instead where we will be able to have a conversation about the issue and more often than not, sort it out amicably.
If you do send the email, be prepared for an endless chain of replies, counter-replies and people getting copied in that don’t need to be part of the drama. Because it sure as hell will have caused a drama!
It can come back to haunt you!
Remember that emails are there forever, delete doesn’t really mean delete. Everything can be retrieved and can be used against you or your organisation. So, never put anything in an email that you may regret coming to light in the future.
Easy — it is when you know how!