Essential Skills - Tricks to Writing a Professional Email
I can tell you one of the biggest things to differentiate yourself from the crowd is being able to write a professional email. The world is continuously moving into more online communications and the ability to quickly and appropriately communicate in writing what needs to be done can save you hundreds if not thousands of hours of time and trouble. Over the course of your career interacting with professors, customers, clients, and coworkers.
Before we jump into this here's a couple things to keep in mind:
Every situation is different! You could be communicating with someone who's been in your industry for 50 years and writes emails in the subject line, or you could be reaching out to a customer or potential client for the first time after meeting them at an event. Your effectiveness as a communicator in a professional setting is not about making the most beautiful email every single time, it's about getting the job done by using the right tools in the right situations and that requires judgment.
When communicating with people often, they will know if you are just copy and pasting an email template instead of writing something out yourself. If you take the time to write out the entire email from the salutation to the closing and tailoring the language of the situation, your emails will be received a lot better than if you had just used a template.
With that out of the way let's jump into the tricks I use when writing my professional emails:
Start with a Salutation!
Whether you say “Hi ____,” “Hello _____,” “To Whom it may concern,” or whatever your preferred language is for the situation, you should do your best to ease into the message with a salutation. The one exception I have to this rule is when an email chain between a co-worker or boss becomes more like an IM chat with quick and short messages through the email.
Address Your Recipient as a Person!
Email (by definition) is virtual mail, and your recipient could have hundreds of messages sitting in their inbox they have to sit through on top yours. One trick I use to ensure that my reader is engaged in the conversation is to open the body of the email with what I call "something human."
This could be something as simple as “I hope you're doing well” or “It was nice talking to you on the phone today” or “Thank you for providing that document that I requested.” By providing that positive energy and acknowledging the recipient as a person (not just a means to an end), the communication that follows will be read in a much better light than if you just jumped in headfirst to what you need.
Your Message
Once you've greeted your reader and made a more personal connection, you should get to your message. Remember to be concise and polite to make it as easy as possible for the recipient to read and digest.
Include a Call to Action, Next Steps, or Additional Requests
We noted above that your recipient could be getting hundreds of emails a week and it's always a lot of information to process going through emails because there's usually so many of them. A key to my success is that I always try to end my emails directing the conversation towards whatever the next steps are. Depending on the situation this could be a call to action to get something done, setting up the next meeting or the next email communication, or clarifying what you need from your recipient to move on with the next steps with the project. Whatever your situation might be, it's important to define what needs to be done next and if you don't know, to ask the question and prompt the next response.
Open or Close the Line of Communication
There are many times when I'm working with the client or working with the student and I know they're going to have questions. If you are a working professional you've probably seen “please let me know if you have any questions” at the end of many people's emails and it's there for a good reason - to keep the line of communication open. By taking the time to write please let me know if you have any questions or something similar, you are inviting your recipient to reach back out to you to ensure there's no miscommunication and the job gets done. Inversely if this is the final communication with you and your recipient for the foreseeable future, take the time to thank them for their time and say that it was a pleasure working with them. Doing this puts a cap on the current subject matter but can also leave the door open for future communications in collaboration.
During my time as a professional, I can tell you the following these steps that I've made for myself has gotten results. By taking the extra time to refer to a previous conversation or direct the next steps of a consulting engagement, my clients have been a lot more receptive and responsive, which helps get things done in a timely manner. For me personally the best thing about learning how to write a good email is that the skill is transferable between all my jobs and will be for many years to come.