How to Write Good Emails?

There is no secret sauce to writing good emails. A well-written email can help win business and also win customer appreciation. We have seen a lot of people struggle with it. Here are five simple tips that will help improve your email writing skills.

Reading: Remember the first line in this blog – There is no secret sauce to writing good emails. The simple answer is you need to Read. The more you read, the better your writing skills will get. You may not see an immediate impact, however, over a period of time you will begin noticing it. You will note that your written skills have drastically improved and you will also begin using new words.

Understand the content before writing a response: Let us say you receive an email from a client. Before you respond to the email, please make sure you read the email a couple of times to ensure you have understood what the client is asking for. Then prepare a response. 

Ensure you have addressed ALL the questions: Let us say client (or) anyone asked five questions that we need to respond to. Sometimes we conveniently ignore 2 of his 5 questions (and we may assume that the client will ignore). However, this is obvious and not a best practice. If he asks a set of questions, (or) anything which is requested it is a good practice to address all the questions. 

Highlight your answers in a different color: This happens when you provide a solution to a client (or) a list of questions the client may ask as a part of a sales process or even send you a list of bugs. The questions of the client will be in default color and your answers can be in blue. This way it will become easier for the person receiving your email to spot the answers. 

Simple tricks: Do not write lengthy emails. Keep things simple. Here are some tricks.

1. If you are starting a thread, start with How are you? 
   (or) Good Morning, How are you?  
2. End the email with Thank you. 
3. Have a good signature and make it easy for the client to contact you. 
4. If you are responding to an email, you could always say ‘Thank you for your email’
5. Spell check and tools like Grammarly will come in handy

Writing good emails is only a part of a puzzle in terms of doing high-quality work. We need to be consistent and follow through the email. For example, emails help with setting the right expectations. However, execution is the key. If you are confirming via email that you will be completing a set of tasks (or) provide an update by a certain date, it is important to update on or before the date on the status. Good work combined with well-written emails will help you progress fast.