Emails can be brilliant. They can also be an incredible hindrance for your communication.
Three top tips for you:
- First one, do you even need to send an email? I know, scheduling a phone call or zoom call can be a bit of a faff, but when that communication happens, everything that needs to be exchanged happens there and then, over a period of five or 10 minutes. So the time that you save in writing that email, you may lose later when you have to have a back and forth.
- Then if you are going to write an email, keep it short, simple, concise, get to the point. ‘Here’s the information’, no more, no less. Keep it clear. If you bombard people with information, spend hours doing it, it’s going to be a waste of time because you’re going to overload them with information, they won’t bother reading. Too long, didn’t read.
- And lastly, look at the way that they operate, maybe reflect back to them a particular style. It might be that you always want to say ‘Hi’ and ‘Cheers’. They may always want to say ‘Dear’ and ‘Regards’, but you may not want to match them. You want to keep it your own style, but I think it’s good to keep to things like date and time formats that they’re using. Otherwise I feel, I’m saying, ‘well, this is the correct way to do it’.
So:
- Consider if you even need to send an email.
- Keep it short, to the point.
- Consider the way that they like doing things and reflect that back to them so that they feel comfortable and have the permission to be who they really want to be, via email.
Send.