5 Email Writing Guidelines To Always Follow
/You likely get over a hundred email every day. I know many days I do.
There are two general types of email most of us receive. The most common is known as ‘Daily Business Email’. The other is what is often called ‘Promotional Email’.
I don’t have to explain what daily business email are, but let’s take a moment to be clear on what promotional email are. Promotional email is usually not junk mail. They are often sent from a business to a customer or prospect. Promotional email also usually fall into one of two categories:
Traditional Marketing Email: Loosely defined as a commercial message often meant to start or build a business-to-consumer relationship. They might be notifying us of the latest newsletter, or they may use our past history to send us notices of new inventory, items on special, upgrade opportunities or other items we may be interested in purchasing. These are the email that can start feeling intrusive.
Transactional Email: Loosely defined as a personalized, one-to-one message based on existing relationships. Transactional email is sometimes called ‘Triggered Email’ because they often are in response to an action a customer or prospect has taken. For example, the online order I placed yesterday has triggered two transactional email so far, one to confirm my order was received and another to say it has been shipped. Another example is when we are sent a notice to confirm we have changed / reset our password.
Why do I bother sharing this history with you? Because no matter if you write email to ‘do’ your job, or if your job is to write Marketing or Transactional email, we should all be following the same email writing guidelines. Great email etiquette is constant no matter what the purpose or who the email recipient is. How could that be? Because our goal is always the same; that we maximize the chance our intended reader(s) will open, read, understand our email and then act in accordance with our call-to-action.
5 Email Writing Guidelines To Always Follow To Write Better Email
As I said above, use the following five email writing guidelines whether you write ‘Daily Business Email’ or Promotional Email:
Use 5-7 words for your Subject Lines. Email subject lines should be short enough to be concise but long enough to tell our reader exactly why they're getting the email… and more than that, they should make a recipient want to open and read the email. The 5-7 rule is a good guideline.
Address your reader by name if you can. Your message will be seen as more relevant and inviting when they are personalized. How formal or informal depends on your relationship and what is expected within your corporate culture and/or brand. Always aim to make your reader feel they are valued and respected.
Incorporate a Call To Action (CTA) in the first sentence or two but don’t sound demanding, pushy or bossy. Repeat a version of the call to action at the end.
Achieve your goal by addressing the needs and/or wishes of the recipient / your customer. Sounds like a no-brainer, but it doesn’t always happen, especially with daily business email.Instead we often write messages as if they are writing to ourselves, therefore, the copy sounds self-serving.
Use whitespace to keep the message easy to read and easy to understand. This is one of the easiest guidelines to use but often the least used.
Email is one of the easiest ways for us to connect. And yes, there is more you could be doing. The email training workshops I’ve been teaching takes a whole half-day. But, I’m confident that if you follow these five key guidelines you will doing some of the best things to get your email opened, read, understood and answered. You will also save yourself and your readers lots of time as you build a trustworthy reputation.
NOTE for anyone sending ‘Promotional Email’: There is an option to insert special preview copy for ‘Traditional Marketing Email’ and ‘Transactional Email’ that I encourage you to use; it will help your reader prioritize your email. If you don’t use the special preview copy all is not lost, traditional marketing email and transactional email will fall back on the same rules daily business email follow and that is to show readers the first few lines of copy in your email.
BONUS: BOTTOM LINE EXAMPLE:
Either way, make sure your first sentence or your Special Preview Copy grabs your readers attention and lets your potential reader know why theyshould invest time out of their busy day to open and read your message. Here is the thing, even with Marketing email we often write as if we are writing to ourselves and address our needs… not their needs and their curiosity. This is important even if they already have a relationship with you. This is your chance to stand out and separate yourself from all the ‘noise’ they receive in their email inbox.
Whether it is in your recipients preview screen or if you are lucky enough that they have opened your email, assume the first two sentences of your email are what has to grab your readers attention. Imagine seeing an email that says.
Option 1 (not great)
Option 2 (much better at managing the readers objectives)
If you have a chance, add a comment and share:
1 thing you like about email
1 thing you don’t like about email
Thanks,
Bruce
About Bruce and Bruce Mayhew Consulting.
Bruce is Corporate Trainer, Keynote Speaker and Executive Coach.
Bruce Mayhew Consulting specializes in customized Email Etiquette Training, Leadership & New Leadership Development, Generational Differences, Time Management Training and other soft skills training solutions in Toronto and across Canada. Bruce is also an Executive Coach to a few select clients.
Bruce is an experienced motivational speaker in Toronto and has inspired audiences across Canada and within the USA and the UK. Bruce works hard to always make sure your training event, conference, retreat, or annual general meeting is a success.
