How to Write a Better E-mail

“The more high tech the world becomes, the more people crave high touch service.”

— John Naisbett, Megatrends

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How to Write a Better E-mail

A recent poll conducted by Training magazine shows the use of e-mail skyrocketing among industry professionals. When participants in the survey were asked which methods of external communication they use, 53% of the respondents answered "e-mail." At a distant 24%, telephone was the next most popular choice of external communication.

The study goes on to state that nearly half of all respondents receive in excess of 21 work-related e-mails per day. That's a lot of correspondence by e-mail!

Clearly, e-mail has become a preferred choice of communication at many companies. But exactly how the rapid increase in e-mail communication affects your customers, still remains to be seen. Are customers really that satisfied with the e-mail communication they receive from the employees in your organization?

Communicating by e-mail is much different than a face-to-face or telephone conversation. In verbal forms of communication, we tend to rely upon tone of voice, body language, and inflection to get our message across—all of which are missing in an e-mail communication. Without these qualities, the wrong words can make for a disastrous e-mail correspondence.

It looks like we are all going to be relying upon e-mail a lot more in the future, so how can you boost the effectiveness of your e-mail correspondence? Here are some quick tips that will help you:

Your greeting should be brief and friendly. Use the customer's name, not only because it personalizes the greeting, but also because this makes it clear who the primary recipient of the e-mail is.

Once you've greeted the customer, you should state the purpose of your e-mail to let customers know right away what they'll find in the rest of the e-mail.

Use bullet points instead of paragraphs when appropriate. This creates more white space and makes it easy for the reader to discern the main points of the message.

Use italics or bold text for key words or other text that you want to stress; use underlining only for hypertext links.

Avoid writing in all capital letters unless using an acronym. It gives the impression that you're shouting.

The best way to make sure your message is not misconstrued is to take a moment to read it over to check for and correct potential misinterpretations.

Look for opportunities throughout the interaction to thank the customer for his or her business and

loyalty.

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