Be effective and efficient in your email correspondence

Writing better emails can improve the chances of an email message being read, understood and actioned. This is often a key area for productivity improvement within a team and between teams.

This resource describes tips to write more effective email messages.

A. Reasons to change how you write emails

You want your message:

• noticed in a timely manner even if there are many messages in your recipient’s Inbox
• read and understood when the reader has competing priorities and distractions
• actioned despite your reader’s limited time or attention to make decisions and act productively

Help the reader of your email to help you!
Imagine your reader has 10 minutes to look at the 30 new emails in their inbox. This means they have about 20 seconds to look at your email. The first look is the most important look – will they act; mark it for action; and leave it alone with the risk that they won’t look at it again because in the future they will be looking at new emails?

B. Tips for writing better emails

No. 1 consideration – is email the best method to convey your message or request?
It might be easier for all involved, for you to pick up the phone and have a conversation.

General

• Compose a separate email per topic or request. In doing so, you reduce the content per message and increase the chance that the important stuff will be read and actioned. Separate emails means you can have meaningful subject lines that get noticed; and it’s easier for the recipient to meaningfully manage (e.g. tag, delete, forward) their email correspondence.
• Only CC recipients when you want to include those people in an ongoing exchange of correspondence.
  • Consider sending the email without CC recipients in the first instance, then forwarding the Sent email to those who need a copy but don’t need to be part of an ongoing exchange.
  • CC implies that a CC recipient is getting a copy, and is not required to act in response to the message. If you require action from a recipient, put their address in ‘To’ box and make it clear what action you seek.

Subject Line

• Use ‘For info’ or ‘For action’ prefix to signal what kind of email it is and what attention is needed
• State actions from reader’s perspective; verb first, e.g. “Documents to review” compared to “Review documents”
• Include deadline details for actions

Here are examples of some ‘Before’ and ‘After’ subject line treatments:

Message

• Compose an introduction of 2-3 lines that has the most important content of the message. Imagine this is the only part of the message that will be read properly, i.e. not scanned. A good introduction lets the recipient quickly judge whether your email is worthy of their attention and action. A good introduction also quickly clarifies the purpose of the email.
• Clearly state the action you seek (plus deadlines and deliverables) so your reader can make an easy quick decision to act as you request. Present this as a separate paragraph with the heading “ACTION”; consider formatting the text to stand out, e.g. bold + orange.
• State the deadline as an absolute measure of time rather than a relative measure, i.e. “Friday 6 May” is much better than “end of the week“.
• If the time of day is important for the deadline, state this as part of the deadline. e.g. Fri 6 May, 5pm.
• Use numbers and/or headings to identify different significant pieces of information. This is useful way to signal the number of different topics.
• Use paragraph breaks/white space to avoid a perception of dense bulky content. Paragraph breaks are helpful in providing unformatted space for your recipient to use if they wish to put their reply comments next to the relevant text within the email.
• Write short sentences, using active (rather than passive) voice. Don’t write like you talk in conversation. Avoid unnecessary words that add to your word count, e.g. “I know I have already been asking too much and you are probably busy, so it is okay if you don’t have time, but if you have a chance could you ...” vs. “If you have time I would appreciate …” (True example of an email I got!)
• Consider using footnote technique if there is optional text you want to include that may detract from the main focus of your message. e.g. “[1]” within the text, then “[1] The background to this is …” at the end of the message after your sign-off.
• Include your contact details at the end of the message (default = email signature) so your recipient has more than one option in responding to you.

See next section for examples of good and bad email messages.

C. Comparing examples of emails

Imagine you got the following 4 emails in your inbox. With only a quick glance, which email appeals to you most? Which email is the easiest to ‘process’ (i.e. decide ‘what it is’ and ‘what to do about it’)?

NB: The majority of the text in the email is incomprehensible on purpose, to illustrate the effect form alone can have on the readability of a message.

Read below each email to learn what is different about each email: Good (+) and Bad (-) features

Assessment

• Subject line doesn’t signal action (-)
• Large volume of text (-)
• No introductory sentences to explain the email contents (-)
• No Headings or Numbers to breakdown content into chunks (-)
• Uses paragraph break/white space between chunks of content (+)
• No explicit statement about action and deliverable in the message (-)
• States relative deadline not absolute deadline (-)

RATING = Not easy to read

Assessment

• Subject line doesn’t signal action (-)
• Small volume of text (compared to Sample 1) (+)
• No introductory sentences to explain the email contents (-)
• Uses Numbers to distinguish between different chunks of content (+)
• Uses paragraph break/white space between chunks of content (+)
• No explicit statement about action and deliverable in the message (-)
• States relative deadline not absolute deadline (-)

RATING = Somewhat easy to read

Assessment

• Subject line doesn’t signal action (-)
• Large volume of text (-)
• No introductory sentences to explain the email contents (-)
• Uses Headings to distinguish between different chunks of content (+)
• Uses paragraph break/white space between chunks of content (+)
• No explicit statement about action and deliverable in the message (-)
• States relative deadline not absolute deadline (-)

RATING = Somewhat easy to read

Assessment

• Subject line signals action and deadline (+)
• Small volume of text (compared to Email 1) (+)
• First 2 introductory sentences explain the email contents (+)
• Uses Headings to distinguish between different chunks of content (+)
• Uses paragraph break/white space between chunks of content (+)
• Explicity states action and deliverable in the message (+)
• States absolute deadline not relative deadline (+)
• Can be easily scanned for quick comprehension of content and desired response (+)

RATING = Easier to read

This work by Questo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.