Chapter 6
IN THIS CHAPTER
Understanding why email matters and where it can take you
Writing email messages that achieve immediate and long-range goals
Using strategies and techniques that work — and avoiding pitfalls
Creating effective letters for business purposes
Love it or hate it, you can’t leave it — email is the central nervous system of business life all over the world. Companies may declare “e-free Fridays” or add newer media like instant messaging or social networks to communicate, but you probably still find that your work life centers on managing your email inbox.
The volume and omnipresence of email in your life gives you the opportunity to accomplish your immediate and long-range goals, or screw up both. This chapter shows you how to make the most of this powerful medium and sidestep the traps.
If you’re wishing for a way to show off your skills, judgment, competence, and resourcefulness and have decision-makers pay attention, shazam — email is the opportunity.
Yes, everyone is overwhelmed with too much email and wants most of it to go away. Consider your own inbox and see if you agree: Most of the email you receive is unrelated to your interests and needs, and most of it is badly thought out and poorly written.
Then take a look at your outbox. Ask yourself (and why not be honest?) how many messages you carelessly tossed off without planning or editing. You may feel that this is the nature of the medium — here one minute, gone the next, so not worth investing time and energy. But email is the tool you depend on to get things done, day in and day out.
Moreover, email has become the delivery system for many forms of communication. In earlier times, you’d write a cover letter to accompany a résumé, for example, and today you deliver it electronically. But a cover letter for a job application is still a cover letter — no matter how it’s delivered. A short business proposal may also be sent by email, but like a cover letter, needs to be better written than ever. Competition only grows. Resist the temptation to write such material in an off-the-top-of-your-head fashion.
Send relevant, direct, concise email that has a clear purpose and respects people’s time, and you get respect back. People notice and respond to well-written messages, though admittedly, most do so unconsciously.
Smart leaders are even more aware of how poor email messaging can affect an organization’s interface with the world at large, resulting in
The guidelines for writing email apply to every type of memo, if your organization has its own in-house communication system, and also to letters. Letters have their own special characteristics as well and I talk about those adaptations later in this chapter. So keep in mind that email is a kind of writing microcosm. Practice your skills here and you know most of what you need for every business writing medium. And — a promise that may sound rash but really isn’t — whatever does replace email someday, these same ideas will make it work.
Your first imperative in drafting an email: Draw your reader to open it and read it. Sound easy? Not at all, given the sheer volume of messages that motivates most people to press the Delete key for any excuse they can come up with. That’s another reason why every email you send must be good: You don’t want a reputation for sending pointless, hard-to-decipher messages that lead people to ignore the important ones that you craft carefully.
With email, the lead has two parts: the subject line and the opening sentence or paragraph. I explore each in detail in the following sections.
Take another look at your inbox and scan the subject lines. Note which ones you opened and why. Most of them probably fall into one of these categories:
Subject: New location, May 3rd meeting
From: Chris Brogan
Subject: This One Change Improved my Life
Subject: Free tools to recover deleted files
Subject: Lowest iPhone price in history
Subject: Our baby panda isn’t camera shy!
Subject: Spacesuit Diapers
All chairs: 20% off and free shipping
To create a good subject line that keeps fingers off that Delete key, follow these steps:
Subject lines work best when they’re as specific as possible. Here are two examples of email messages I didn’t open because the subject lines were too vague and general to capture my interest, along with ways the message could work better.
Ensuring that the most important words appear in your recipient’s inbox window and aren’t cut off for lack of space — or because they’re reading on smartphones and other hand-held devices — is worth thinking about every time. Few people pay attention to this simple principle, so build this habit to reap a real advantage.
Investing in good, accurate subject lines always rewards you. You may not be able to deliver the whole of your subject in the limited amount of characters your recipient’s inbox allows, but try to get the main point across. Unless it’s a marketing message, you needn’t aim to be clever; but if your message is important, spend some time to make the first few words intriguing.
Be sure to review your subject line after you write the whole message. You may shift tack in the course of writing. In fact, the writing process can nudge you to think through your reason for creating the message and how to best make your case. Drafting the message first and then distilling the subject line is often easier.
Many people use email as their personal database to draw on as needed, so always use the subject line to make messages findable.
The greeting you use is also part of the lead. Draw on a limited repertoire developed for letters:
You can use “Greetings” or something else, but be sure it doesn’t feel pretentious.
Follow with first name or last as appropriate, using the necessary title (Miss, Ms., Mrs., Mr.). For the plural, Mesdames and Messieurs definitely feel over the top for English speakers. For groups, you can sometimes come up with an aggregate title, such as “Dear Software X Users,” “Dear Subscribers,” “Hi Team,” and so on. Don’t be homey or quirky. Using “Folks,” for example, can grate on people sooner or later. Avoid generalizations like “Dear Customer” if you’re writing to an individual. These days, people expect to be addressed by name.
Because email leads usually include the same information that appears in the subject line, try not to repeat the same wording or exactly the same information. Email copy occupies valuable real estate. Your best chance of enticing people to read the whole message is to make the lead and everything that follows read fast and tight and not be repetitive.
Your email lead can consist of one sentence, two sentences, or a paragraph, as needed. When the subject line clearly suggests your focus, you can pick up the thread. For example:
Often you need a context or clarifying sentence before you get to your request:
When you write to people who are outside your own department or company, you often need to frame carefully. Suppose you’re responsible for fielding customer complaints and must write to an irate woman who claims your company sold her a damaged pair of boots.
You build a successful email message at the intersection of goal and audience. Intuition can take you part of the way, but analyzing both factors in a methodical way improves all your results. Knowing your goal and your audience is especially critical when you’re handling a difficult situation, trying to solve a problem, or writing a message that’s really important to you.
Email often seems like a practical tool for getting things done. You write to arrange a meeting, receive or deliver information, change an appointment, request help, ask or answer a question, and so on. But even simple messages call for some delving into what you really want.
Consider Amy, a new junior member of the department, who hears that an important staff meeting was held and she wasn’t invited. She could write the following:
Tom, I am so distressed to know I was excluded from the staff meeting last Thursday. Was it an oversight? It makes me feel like you don’t value my contribution! Can we talk about this?
Bad move! Presenting herself as an easily offended childish whiner with presumptions undermines what she really wants — to improve her positioning in the department. Instead of using the opportunity to vent, Amy can take a dispassionate look at the situation and build a message that serves her true goal:
Tom, I’d like to ask if I can be included in future department meetings. I am eager to learn everything I can about how we operate so I can do my work more efficiently and contribute more. I’ll very much appreciate the opportunity to better understand department thinking and initiatives.
With external communication, knowing your goal is just as important. For example, if you’re responsible for answering customer complaints about defective appliances and believe your goal is to make an unhappy customer go away, you can write:
We regret your dissatisfaction, but yours is the only complaint we have ever received. We suggest you review the operating manual.
If you assume your job is to mollify the customer on a just-enough level, you may say:
We’re sorry it doesn’t work. Use the enclosed label to ship it back to us, and we’ll repair it within six months.
But if your acknowledged goal is to retain this customer as a future buyer of company products, and generate good word of mouth, and maybe even positive rather than negative tweets, you’re best off writing:
We’re so sorry to hear the product didn’t work as you hoped. We’re shipping you a brand new one today. I’m sure you’ll be happy with it, but if not, please call me right away at my personal phone number …
For both Amy’s and the customer service scenarios, keeping your true, higher goals in mind often leads you to create entirely different messages. The thinking is big picture and future-oriented. In Amy’s case, the higher purpose is to build a relationship of trust and value with a supervisor and gain opportunities. In the unhappy customer case, you want to reverse a negative situation and cultivate a loyal long-term customer.
After you’re clear on what you want to accomplish with your email, think about your audience — the person or group you’re writing to. One message, one style does not fit all occasions and individuals. As Chapter 2 details, when you ask someone to do something for you in person, you instinctively choose the best arguments to make your case. You adapt your message as you go along according to the other person’s reactions — his words, body language, expression, tone of voice, inflection, and all the other tiny clues that tell you how the other person is receiving your message in the moment you’re delivering it.
An email message, of course, provides no visual or oral feedback. Your words are on their own. So your job is to think through, in advance, how your reader is most likely to respond and base what you write on that.
Anticipating a reader’s reaction can take a little imagination. You may find you’re good at it. Try holding a two-way conversation with the person in your head. Observe what she says and how she says it. Note any areas of resistance and other clues.
Do you need to consider so many aspects when you’re drafting every email? No, if your goal is really simple, like a request to meet. But even then, you’re better off knowing whether this particular recipient needs a clear reason to spend time with you, how much notice she prefers, if she already has set feelings about the subject you want to discuss, and so on. It makes a difference if you’re writing to someone higher up the ladder with a crushing schedule or your colleague next door. You can tilt the result in your favor — even for a seemingly minor request — by taking account of such things.
The more important your message is to you, the more carefully you must think it out and consider your reader’s framework. Sometimes just one facet of the person’s situation or personality may matter, like his attitude toward new technology. The person’s age may be relevant to shaping both content and tone. Politically incorrect as it may sound, different generations have different attitudes toward work, communications, rewards, authority, career development, and much more. If you’re a Millennial (born after 1980) or Gen X’er (born between 1965 and 1980), you need to understand the Boomer’s (born between 1946 and 1964) need for respect, hierarchical thinking, correct grammar, courtesy, in-person communication, and more. “Goal” and “audience” are the planning guideposts that never fail you.
Try This: I often ask participants in writing workshops to create detailed profiles of their immediate supervisors. Pretend that you’re an undercover secret agent and you’re asked to file a report on the person you report to. Take 10 minutes and see what you can put together. First scan the demographic, psychographic, positioning, and personality traits outlined in Chapter 2 and list those you think relevant to defining that person (for example, age, position, information preferences, hot buttons, decision-making style). Then fill in what you know or intuit about the person under each category. I promise you’ll find you understand far more about your boss than you think.
Read through the completed profile and I bet you’ll see major clues on how to communicate better with that important person, as well as how to work with him successfully in general and make yourself more highly valued. You may uncover ways to strengthen your relationship or even turn it around.
Suppose you’re inviting your immediate supervisor, Jane, to a staff meeting where you plan to present an idea for a new project. You hope to persuade her that your project is worth the resources to make it happen. First clarify your goal, or set of goals. Perhaps, in no particular order, you aim to
You know Jane is heavily scheduled and the invite must convince her to commit the time. What factors about her should you consider? Your analysis may suggest the following:
Presto! With these four points, you have a reader profile to help you write Jane a must-come email — and even more important, a guide that enables you to structure an actual meeting that accomplishes exactly what you want.
After you know your goal and audience, you have the groundwork in place for good content decisions. You know how to judge what information is likely to lead the person or group to respond the way you want. (See Chapter 2 for guidance on how to address groups and construct a reader who epitomizes that group.)
Think about audience benefits. This important marketing concept applies to all persuasive pitches. Benefits speak to the underlying reasons you want something. A dress, for example, possesses features like color, style, and craftsmanship, but the benefit is that it makes the wearer feel beautiful. When you’re planning a message and want it to succeed, think about the audience and goal, and write down your first ideas about matching points and benefits.
For example, to draw Jane from the preceding section to that meeting, based on your analysis, the list may include
Many other ideas may be relevant — it’s great for the environment, it gives people more free time — but probably not to Jane.
Think of your email message like a sandwich: The opening and closing hold your content together and the rest is the filling. Viewed in this way, most email is easy to organize. Complicated messages full of subtle ideas and in-depth instructions or pronouncements are inappropriate to the medium anyway.
Email’s typical orientation toward the practical means that how you set up and how you close count heavily — but the middle still matters. Typically, the in-between content explains why — why a particular decision should be made, why you deserve an opportunity, or why the reader should respond positively. The middle portion can also explain in greater detail why a request is denied, or provide details and technical backup, or a series of steps to accomplish something.
Try This: Here’s a recap of how to plan a message demonstrating how the middle works. Take a message you wrote recently or are in progress of writing. Figure out the basic content by brainstorming what points will accomplish your goal in terms of your target audience, as outlined in the preceding sections. Then do the following:
Write out a neat, simple list of the points to make.
One example is the list I created to convince Jane to come to a meeting with a positive mind-set in the “Determining the best content” section.
Scan your list and frame your lead.
Your lead is the sentence or paragraph that clearly tells readers why you’re writing and what you want in a way most likely to engage their interest.
Starting with the bottom line is almost always your best approach for organizing a message. Remember the reporter’s mantra: “Don’t bury the lead.”
Skipping the subject line for now, a get-Jane-to-the-meeting message can begin like this:
To structure the middle, consider the previously identified points that are most important to Jane:
You then simply march through these points to build the body of the message. For example:
The thinking you did before you started to write now pays handsome dividends. With a little reshuffling of the four points, you have a persuasive memo that feels naturally organized and logical. You not only know your content, but also how it fits together. Moreover, your simple invitation has an excellent chance of bringing Jane to the demonstration with an interested and positive attitude.
This process may sound easy to do with an invented example, but actually, working with real ideas, readers, and facts is even easier.
Review the list you assemble, decide which points best serve your purpose, and put them in a logical order. Your list may include more thoughts than you need for a convincing message, and you can be selective. That’s fine. Cross them out. “Just enough” is better than too much.
Sign off with courtesy and tailor the degree of formality to the occasion and relationship. If you’re writing to a very conservative person or a businessman in another culture, a formal closing like “Sincerely” is often best. The same is true for a résumé cover letter, which is essentially a letter in email form and should look like a letter.
But in most situations, less formal end-signals are better: “Thanks!” “I look forward to your response.” “Best regards,” or a variant. Generally, avoid cute signoffs like “Cheers.” I recommend always ending with your name — first name if you know the person or are comfortable establishing informality. Even if your reader is someone who hears from you all the time, using your name personalizes the message and alerts her that the communication is truly finished.
Actually, your finished message needs one more thing — finalizing the subject line. Consider at this point the total thrust of your content. Then decide what words and phrases work best to engage your audience’s interest. The “Jane” subject line, for example, needs to get across that your message is a meeting invitation, suggest what it’s about, and emphasize that it is worth her time. Perhaps:
Can you come: May 3rd Demo, Social Media Project
Email deserves your best writing, editing, and proofreading skills. Often the message is who you are to your audience. You may be communicating with someone you’ll never meet, in which case the virtual interaction determines the relationship and the success of the message. At other times, crafting good email wins you the opportunity to present your case in person or progress to the next stage of doing business.
The following sections run through some of my top tips for crafting copy that perfectly suits email.
Generally speaking, keep email to fewer than 300 words and stick to one idea or question. Three hundred words can go a long way (the memo I wrote to draw Jane to the meeting in the preceding section ended up only 145 words total).
Choose words and phrases that are conversational, friendly, businesslike, and unequivocally clear. Email is not the place for fanciful language and invention. You want readers to understand the message the first time they read it. If they are left to figure out your meaning, they will either stop reading or fill the lines in themselves and may end up with a different idea than you intended. This is where a lot of that expensive confusion comes from in every organization. Put your energy into the content and structure of your message, and express what you want to communicate in unambiguous and straightforward language.
Try to make your writing transparent, eliminating all barriers to understanding. Your messages may end up less colorful than they could be, and that’s okay. Clear, concise language is especially relevant to messages directed at overseas audiences, because they may come to them with limited English language skills.
The business writing guidelines in Chapter 3 apply even more intensely to email. You want your message to be readable and completely understood in the smallest possible amount of time. Draw on the plain old Anglo-Saxon word-stock and use mostly one- and two-syllable words. Use longer words when they’re the best choice and serve a real purpose.
Short sentences work for the same reason. Aim for 10 to 15 words long on average. Paragraphs should be one to three sentences long to support comprehension and build in lots of air.
These graphic techniques don’t require special software or a degree in fine arts. They’re simply ways to visually present information and make your writing more organized and accessible.
Subheads are great for longer email. You can make the type bold and add a line of space above it. Subheads for email can be matter of fact:
This technique neatly guides the reader through the information and also enables you as a writer to organize your thinking and delivery with ease.
Try This: Drafting all your subheads before you write can be a terrific way to organize an email. Pick a message that you already wrote and found challenging. Think the subject through to come up with the major points or steps to cover and write a simple, suitable subhead for each. Put the subheads in logical order and add the relevant content under each. Now check if all the necessary information to make your point is there — if not, add it. Your message is sure to become clearer, more cohesive, and more persuasive.
Here’s an extra trick. If you feel that you have too many subheads after drafting the entire message, just cut some or all of them out. You still have a solid, logically organized email message. Just be sure to check that the connections between sections are clear without the subheads.
Bullets offer another excellent option for presenting your information. They are:
Never use bullet lists as a dumping ground for thoughts that you’re too lazy to organize or connect. If you doubt this advice, think of all the bad PowerPoint shows you’ve seen — screens rife with random-seeming bullets.
Numbered lists are also helpful, particularly if you’re presenting a sequence or step-by-step process. Instructions work well in numbered form. Give numbered lists some air so that they don't look intimidating — skip a space between each item.
Making your type bold gives you a good option for calling attention to key topics, ideas, or subsections of your message. You can use bold for lead-ins:
Holiday party coming up. Please see the task list and choose your way of contributing.
You may also use bold to highlight something in the body of the text:
Please see the task list and choose your way of contributing by December 10.
Of course, don’t overload your message with boldface or it undermines its reason for being. Keep in mind that boldface doesn’t always transfer across different email systems and software, so don’t depend on it too much for making your point.
Underlining important words or phrases is another option, but it tends to look outdated.
Contact information these days can be quite complex. Typically you want people to find you by email or telephone. Plus, there’s your tagline. Your company name. Your website. Your blog. The book you wrote. The article you got published. Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. Professional affiliations and offices. And potentially much more.
Decide on a few things you most want to call attention to and refrain from adding the rest. Better yet, create several signature blocks for different audiences. Then you can select the most appropriate one for the people you’re writing to. Don’t include your full signature block every time you respond to a message, especially if you incorporate a logo, which arrives as an attachment. Check your email program’s settings so the automatic signature is minimal, or altogether absent.
You may be under the impression that you don’t write business letters and never need to in today’s fast-paced world. Think again. You are probably writing letters without realizing it. Don’t be fooled by the fact that you’re using an electronic delivery system and don’t need a stamp. Acknowledge that your missive is a letter, and you do a much better job of achieving your goal.
When something important is at stake, recognize that what you produce merits extra care in terms of its content, language, and visual impression. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to find your old stationery. In many cases, it’s perfectly fine to send your letter as an email. In other instances a physical letter serves you better. If you’re a nonprofit manager writing to elderly donors, for example, relying on email is questionable. As always, consider your goal and audience in deciding on the best mode of delivery.
Here are some of the business-world occasions when you should think “Aha! This calls for a letter!”
If you search online, you’ll find a ton of prewritten and preformatted letters for every occasion. You may get some ideas from them, but almost never will a cookie-cutter template work as well as your own well-crafted letter. Often the tone is wrong and the content is bland and impersonal, which totally undercuts the reason you’re writing a letter. So, I won’t give you formulas. However, specific types of letters, such as marketing messages, job application letters, and networking notes, are covered in the relevant chapters ahead.
What letters have in common is the need to look good. They may be delivered electronically and can even be signed online in most legal situations today. But in many cases they should look like a letter, not an email. Check out the sidebar “Formatting your letters” for a basic format to customize to each occasion.
We’ve gotten accustomed to the fact a digital message is fleeting, that most photographs viewed on our smartphones are rarely printed, and that social messages that take a lot of time to create are meant to disappear forever in a few minutes. This makes a meaningful communication we can hold onto even more valued.
I know several professional colleagues who make a habit of handwriting their messages to clients and other important connections on notepaper: thank you for the help or referral, happy holidays, happy birthday, congratulations on your award or your son’s graduation. These savvy professionals look for opportunities to write notes like these. Don’t laugh. When they visit these recipients’ offices and see these notes prominently displayed on the contact’s bulletin boards, the strategic value of this small effort is reinforced. I should tell you that these friends are all very successful.
Chapter 7 explains how to apply the basic writing principles to the big make-or-break business documents: proposals, reports, and more.