16 Simple Tips for Effective Email Communications

In this mod­ern era, we are com­mu­ni­cat­ing in emails and SMSes. Espe­cially in our work­place, email is per­va­sive that we can­not avoid look­ing our mail­box (not men­tion­ing the Gmail, Hot­mail or Yahoo Mail). We still have to use it in our every­day work. At times, it’s a headache to com­mu­ni­cate infor­ma­tion or instruc­tions to our recip­i­ents. Things just didn’t work out right. Some­times, emails just bounce back and forth with only minor clar­i­fi­ca­tions. It’s frus­trat­ing right?! So, how do you com­mu­ni­cate effec­tively? How do you want the email to effec­tively inform the other party and deliver the cor­rect results?

The answer is all about being clear and con­cise in your email. We’ve got 16 tips for you to deliver clear and con­cise mes­sage in your email.

1. Write objec­tive of the email – What do you want to get out of it? Get a piece of work done? Con­vey infor­ma­tion? Report sta­tus? Make a complaint/request?
   

   Images from VistaICO

2. Write a short para­graph sum­ma­riz­ing the objec­tive of the email
3. Keep sub­ject short but strik­ing – Remem­ber, you want the recip­i­ent to see your email out of the tonnes of email in their mailbox.
4. Break big para­graphs into smaller ones. It’s eas­ier to read.
5. Each para­graph is best sorted in their log­i­cal objec­tive order for the reader to digest infor­ma­tion in a log­i­cal sequence.
6. Keep sen­tences short — In this way, it’s eas­ier to digest the information
7. Struc­ture your sen­tences in this man­ner. Keep one char­ac­ter space between the words for comma. Keep two char­ac­ter spaces between two sen­tences for full stop.
8. Empha­size impor­tant infor­ma­tion by bold­ing or under­lin­ing. Impor­tant infor­ma­tion can be dates, venue or even key mes­sage.   Using col­ors is also a good form of empha­siz­ing impor­tant information.
9. Avoid cliché – There is not spe­cific value in putting them except for dec­o­ra­tion pur­poses… Cliché exam­ples are “First of all”, “First thing first”, etc.
10. Try to keep email mes­sage to fit into the nor­mal user win­dow – This will avoid exces­sive mouse scrolling. When a human sees a long email, he will usu­ally move it to the last few to read. You do not want to let your email become the last to read, right?
11. To get things mov­ing, set a date­line for reply. To make it even more effec­tive, give them a call or notify them before the actual date­line (e.g. a noti­fi­ca­tion email three days before actual dateline).
12. Do not use emails for chat­ting. You can use MSN, ICQ or a tele­phone for that. Fur­ther­more, if you are aware of it, emails can be used for audit purposes…
13. Call the sender if the email starts to become a chat ses­sion. Let’s not waste time.
14. Refrain from inject­ing emo­tions in the email. If some­one offended you, be pro­fes­sional. Do not respond with a heated email. You never know how the per­son will react in respond to your email.
15. If your work is urgent, do not send email. Call the recip­i­ent instead. Urgent things should not be requested via emails. A call reaches the other party directly while an email will require the mes­sage to be sent over and till the other party reads the email and responds to you. Com­pare the time taken between the two.
16. Do antic­i­pate ques­tions with your email sent. This is in par­tic­u­lar for “incom­plete” or non-objective emails. There­fore, always write email objec­tively and com­plete. No point wast­ing time bounc­ing back and forth for clarifications.

Note, hav­ing men­tioned the above tips, there is still a con­sid­er­a­tion that your recip­i­ent is not think­ing like you do (You fac­tor). And they may not receive infor­ma­tion like you do. Our advice is to under­stand your recip­i­ent (You fac­tor) and cus­tomize your email accord­ingly for him to receive infor­ma­tion better.

Related Posts

• 10 Ways to Superb Email Productivity!
• 12 Advanced Tips to take your Email­ing Skills to the Next Level
• 6 Mis­takes to Avoid in Emailing
• Be Pro­duc­tive – Stay Healthy (Part 2)!
• Things to Keep You Busy on a Busi­ness Trip
• 14 Ways to Stay Focus at Work
• 4 Sure Ways to Influ­ence Your Colleagues!
• Get the Best of All Worlds!
• Influ­ence and Win All Your Colleagues!
• Plan the Day and Week!