Whether you are a business owner, an employer, or an employee, emails are probably a part of your daily life. If you are concerned about the level of professionalism in your emails, this list of tips is a perfect checklist to go through in order to make sure that you are sending out professional emails each and every time.
Use Grammar Check Tools
No matter how many emails people write in a day, grammar mistakes and misspellings can still occur. The best way to save yourself from these mistakes and save time looking over email to make sure that everything is perfect is the download a grammar check tool. These tools stay active on your browser so that when you are writing emails, they will highlight something if it is spelled wrong or if the grammar in a sentence is off. Some programs even re-write sentences for you so that you can see options for better sentence structure.
These programs are a great companion tool for anyone who does a lot of writing in their work, especially for those who are constantly writing emails. When you are in a rush, the last thing you want to do is go over your emails to make sure that you haven’t missed any grammatical errors. Let these programs do it for you so that you can breeze through all of your emails.
Hire An Email Host
If you are a business owner, you may be working with a personal email to communicate with employees and customers. This works okay if you know the people with whom you are communicating, but it gets harder to build a brand if you are sending out promotional material through a personal email address. A good practice for any business is to upgrade to secure email hosting where you can be sure that your emails are protected from unwanted eyes, your email address has your business’s name in it, you have no unwanted advertisements, and you can archive and store important information.
An email host offers many benefits for business owners. The first major improvement that you will see once you sign up for an email host is that you can choose the name of your email so that instead of using an @gmail or @hotmail account, you can choose to say @ *insert your company name here*. This will increase the credibility of your company and potential clients will have more trust in your correspondence because you have paid to have a personalized email address.
One of the biggest benefits of integrating an email host into your daily emails is the security that it offers. Not only can you store personal and work documents, but you can also avoid the hassle of deleting spam emails because the host can filter through junk mail before it reaches you.
Create Appropriate Email Headings
This is an important element in the art of sending emails because it is the first thing that recipients will see. If you need something done quickly, include the word “urgent” in the heading so that people don’t glance at it and then decide to open it later.
You should also make sure that the headings of your emails are not too long. Full sentences should be delegated to the body of the email, not the heading. It is also important to not use words like “free” and “promotion” because it could send your email straight to the spam folder. This is the last thing you want as it will delay communications with your team and ultimately set you back for the day or week. A simple mistake like this can cause frustration among employees, so make sure to stick to a concise heading that states the purpose of the email with as few words as possible.
Cut Out Unnecessary Words
Over-explaining or using too many adjectives makes it harder to understand what you are trying to say. Try to get straight to the point when composing emails so that your employees spend less time reading emails and more time finding solutions.
Long sentences that are full of unnecessary words will bore readers and most likely lead them to miss the point of the email. Stick to one adjective per noun and keep obscure vocabulary out of the mix. It is possible to sound professional without trying to sound like a literary scholar.
Make Your Emails Easy To Skim Through
If you must write a long email to cover several topics, make sure that it is organized in a way that your readers can pick out the important stuff. Most people skim emails, so don’t expect your employees to read every single word. Use bullet points to distinguish topic changes and separate different thoughts into different paragraphs.
It is also important to not make paragraphs too long because it will deter people from reading the whole thing. Keep paragraphs limited to a few sentences each with the important keywords towards the beginning of each sentence.
Take The Time To Sign Each Email
No matter how much of a hurry you are in, each email should have a friendly but professional greeting and a pre-programmed signature line. This signature line should include your full name, your position in the company, and the company logo at the bottom.
If you forget to sign your emails, it looks like your correspondence is an afterthought and your employees or customers may not know who they are speaking with. This is especially true if you are using a custom business email that does not have your name included in the email address.
Always Double-Check Before You Send
This is the last step before you click send, so it is important that you re-read your words, make sure that you have gone through the steps above, and double-check that if you have any attachments, they are fully uploaded and formatted correctly.
The creating and sending of emails is one of the most common forms of communication in the business world, so it is very important to remember the proper etiquette when crafting these messages. If you are ever in doubt, refer the the list above in order to write and send the most professional emails that you can.
