How to Draft a Professional E-mail?

It is very good to know that how to compose a good e-mail. We could also need good writing skills to draft a professional e-mail. The 3*3 writing process (Pre-writing, Drafting and Revising) is helpful in developing good writing skills. Subject lines, well-organized bodies, and complete closing information are focused while writing professional e-mail (Guffey, 2016). These steps are explained below:

·         Draft a compelling subject line: The subject line reveals the main purpose of e-mail. So it is an important part. The subject line should be clear and concise. It also needs to be changed according to subject matter when there are continuous replies to the e-mail.

·         Include a greeting: The greeting helps the receiver to analyse whether they are primary or secondary receiver. For friends and relatives, words can be used like hello, good morning followed by receiver’s name and for more formal e-mails, greeting can be written as Dear Ms. Julie.

·         Organize the body for readability and tone: Make the message east to read using bullet points where relevant. Avoid wordiness but do not compromise with clarity, if there is need to explain something then go ahead. Stay the tone positive and show preference to receiver using you instead of using I/We.

Close effectively: End your e-mail with requests and forward looking tone. Also include contact information and use words like Regards, Sincerely. Must include your name to avoid confusion and make a signature block too. 

Here is the video about how to write effective e-mails and getting people to read and act on your messages. 

Are you ready to draft a good E-mail?  

Try Drafting some short e-mails and post in comment box.

References

Guffey, M. E. (2016). Business Communications: Process and Product, Fifth Canadian Edition . Toronto : Nelson Education .

 

Good and Effective E-mails

As E-mail is a widely used tool for business communications, but a 2013 survey by Send mail, Inc., found that it has caused tension, confusion or other negative consequences for 64% of working professionals, as mentioned in article by Mind Tools Editorial Team. So it is a critical need to know how to write professional e-mails. Let us have a look at how a good and effective e-mail looks like. It should be with proper tone, no negativity, forward looking, using active and passive voice.

Here is an example from Business Communication: Process and Product Style Guide, Fifth Edition, which depicts the qualities of good e-mail (Guffey, 2016). This example relates to the example of bad e-mail which helps to better understand the difference between bad and good e-mail.

Example:

Date:       dd-mm-yyyy

To:           <ABC.com>

From:      <QUE.com>

Subject:   Salary Information Request

Dear Ms. Marcus,

The article you are now researching for Business Management Weekly sounds fascinating, and we are flattered that you wish to include our organization. We do have many outstanding young salespeople, both male and female, who are commanding top salaries.

Each of our salesperson operates under an individual salary contract. During salary negotiations several years ago, an agreement was reached in which both sales staff and management agreed to keep the terms of these individual contracts confidential. Although specific salaries and commission rates cannot be released, we can provide you with a ranked list of our top salespeople for the past five years. Three of the current top salespeople are under the age of thirty-five.

Attached is a fact sheet regarding out top salespeople. We wish you every success, and we hope to see our organization represented in your article.

Cordially

QUE

Executive Vice President

XYZ Company

Attachment: Sales Fact Sheet

This e-mail look professional as first body paragraph shows interest and transition sets up are explained. In second paragraph, explanation gives good reasons for refusing request. The subordination and passive voice is used and the refusal is also softened by substitute. The closing of the e-mail is also pleasant and forward-looking.

References

Guffey, M. E. (2016). Business Communication: Process and Product: Style Guide, Fifth Edition. Toronto : Nelson Education.

How bad E-mails look like?

Have you ever seen an e-mail without subject, without proper subject line, without greeting, without use of courtesy title to address person or written like a long paragraph. That is what we can consider as a bad e-mail.  I also saw an interesting video about bad e-mails and responses that others make to bad e-mails; must watch it!!!! 

Example of bad e-mail:

There is example of a bad e-mail, taken from Business Communication: Process and Product Style Guide, Fifth Edition which is helpful in understanding the bad contents in e-mail (Guffey, 2016).

                                                                    

Date: dd-mm-yyyy

To: <xyz>

From: <abc>

Subject: Reply to request

Dear Marcus

I have your e-mail of October 21 in which you request information about the salaries and commissions of our top young salespeople.

I am sorry to inform you that we cannot reveal data of this kind. I must, therefore, refuse your request. To release this information would violate our private employee contracts. Such disclosure could make us liable for damages, should any employee seek legal recourse. I might say, however, that our salespeople are probably receiving the highest combined salary and commissions of any salespeople in this field.

If it were possible for us to help with your fascinating research, we would certainly be happy to do so.

In the above example, there are some areas where the e-mail looks very unprofessional.

·         The subject line of e-mail is not clear as it only tells that the e-mail is reply to a request instead of telling which request or about what matter.

·         The greeting head is also missing courtesy title.

·         The first paragraph of e-mail states the obvious information which the receiver should already know.

·         Second paragraph sounds harsh, blunt and unnecessarily negative as without giving some suggestions about researching, it is completely refusing to help.

·         And in the last paragraph, it switches tone as first it is talking about inability to help and now saying other way.

      Have you ever sent an e-mail like this? If yes, what response did you get?

References

Guffey, M. E. (2016). Business Communication: Process and Product: Style Guide, Fifth Edition. Toronto : Nelson Education.

Types of Email

There are different types of e-mails that are used in business and that we see in our daily lives also. Types of E-mails that businesses can focus are Marketing e-mails, Notification e-mails and Transaction e-mails. The image below shows some characteristics of these three types of e-mails. The descriptions of these emails are also clearly mentioned in the article published by Mailjet. 

 It is also important to consider what some categories are of e-mails that lie under each major type. There are also some examples which helps to better understand these types of e-mails: 

Marketing E-mails	Notification E-mails	Transaction E-mails
-Newsletters -Flash sales -Sales announcements -Promotions announcements	-Congratulation after purchase or subscription -Birthday e-mail -Goods back in stock -Feedback request -Shopping cart abandonment	-Account opening (welcome message) -Order shipment confirmation -Payment confirmation -Invoice -Shipment tracking and order status

We receive many promotional e-mails about new products and discounts. My inbox also remain full of promotional e-mails which sometimes create conflicts to consider important e-mails. But nowadays, in era of technology, e-mails are showed up to us in a systematic way. As I have seen on my e-mail, the e-mail messages are categorized as primary, social and promotional, as shown in image, which helps us to avoid wastage of time when we only want to check important e-mails. Mark Kilens says in his article that 95% of online consumers want companies to send them updates through e-mail and 75% of customers prefer to receive permission-based information through e-mail, so focused on use of e-mail marketing effectively.  

What are your views about technological development of E-mails? 

Do you want to some other advances?  

What is an E-mail?

What is an E-mail?

We use e-mails in our daily lives: in college, universities, and workplace. But I am surprised to see that some people are not considering e-mails as professional thing. They used to send an e-mail like they are texting on Whats app or Facebook. So I think it is important to pay attention to E-mails; we should know the difference between good and bad E-mails because today’s professionals consider it a great thing. First, I am talking about what is an e-mail and how its importance is increasing.

An E-mail (electronic mail) is exchange of messages stored in computers by telecommunications.

E-mails Not Going Away:

As mentioned in Business Communication: Product and Process, Fifth Edition, critics says that e-mail is outdated, inefficient and slowly dying. They complains that e-mail took too much time, increase stress and leaves a dangerous paper trail. However, e-mail in the workplace is here to stay. Social media receives in the news that most business messages are still sent by e-mail. In the next three to five years, we may see more business messages being sent by social media platforms, predicts Dr. Monica, author of Brilliant Email, as mentioned in the “Business Communication: Process and Product, Fifth Edition”. Typical business people spend at least two hours a day, or much more, writing and replying to e-mail (Guffey, 2016).

According to me, with the growing needs of E-mails in business, we should know the difference between good and bad E-mails and most importantly, we should know how to compose a good E-mail.

Nowadays, technology is used to improve the effectiveness of E-mails as they are playing greater part in business communications. Improvements have been made regarding security and privacy as well. I read an article  about changes made by Gmail in handling images and enhancing the security of images and other attached data. 

What you thought about era of E-mails? Is it long going? Comment.

References

Guffey, M. E. (2016). Business Communications: Process and Product, Fifth Canadian Edition . Toronto : Nelson Education .