Writing Clear, Effective Business Email

This video course teaches the best practices business writers are using to create clear, effective business email. The course teaches email writing etiquette, best practices for writing business e-mail, and how to write effective response e-mails, request emails, e-mails describing business problems, and compelling persuasive emails. Go through the course by clicking on the lessons listed in the left column. Follow the instructions in the lessons.

Email is certainly a useful tool. For private users, it’s a way to keep in touch with friends and relatives. Email at this level is often informal, uses emoticons  and slang, and in many ways resembles casual, conversational communication.

At the corporate level, email allows professionals to solve problems, conduct business, collaborate, and keep in touch in a manner sometimes more convenient than phone calls, faxes, and in-person contact.

Business people should not confuse the two uses. Writing and content appropriate for personal emails may not be appropriate for corporate emails. This lesson focuses on the appropriate uses for email and some conventions any writer should follow in an email message.

The subject line often determines how quickly the reader will read and respond to the e-mail. Use the subject line as a valuable tool in your strategy to communicate successfully with the reader. Your goal is to make sure your e-mail is read and the reader responds as you expect.  The subject line is the first part of your strategy to write e-mails that have impact.

in this training video, you will learn how to write subject lines that will ensure the reader opens and reads your e-mail, and you will learn how to begin the e-mail so you are more likely to have a positive impact on the reader and get the response you want.

You want to write email quickly and easily, and you want to write high-quality, professional email. You can do both.  The key to writing clear, professional email quickly and easily is planning.

Stay in the planning mindset until you’re ready to write.  When you’re planning, you can think about the big picture.  You can see what you want and how you’re going to get it.  Once you start writing, you’re into the sentences and words mindset.  You can’t plan when you’re focused on writing clear sentences using the right words.  Stay in the planning mindset until you’re sure you have the entire email plotted out.

This lesson explains the procedure you should go through to plan your email.  Of course, if you’re writing back and forth to a co-worker with two or three sentences in each email, you’ll do less planning—but you still must plan.

Organize your email so the reader understands the message and responds as you expect. Poorly organized email is frustrating to the reader and results in confusion or miscommunication. Well-organized email ensures the reader receives your message in a flow that will increase the reader’s understanding and impress the reader with your ability and organization.

Write clear sentences and words. Business writing is a way of conveying to the reader what you would say if you were with the reader. It should be simple, straightforward, and easy to understand. This lesson teaches you how to use clear sentences and words in your emails..

Tone and level of formality affect the clarity of your email and your relationship to the reader. People use an impersonal tone and formal vocabulary when corresponding with strangers with whom they will never have a cooperative relationship. To be clear and maintain a partnering, collegial relationship, use a cooperative tone and the same level of formality you would use in a business meeting with colleagues you know and regard highly. This lesson explains tone and the level of formality you should use in your business email.

In this lesson, you will learn how to write an email in response to a request from someone. To write a successful response email,

1. Give the readers what they want, under the conditions they specify.
2. Identify the key terms in the request and use them in the response.

Let the requester’s words guide your response.  Identify what the reader wants by looking at the words the writer uses.  Then, put the requester’s actual words into your response and ensure you have given the reader what he or she wants  under the conditions specified.

You can write request emails so the reader responds with what you want every time. Write the request email using strategies that will ensure you receive what you need and everything you need when you need it.

When you write an email describing a business problem you’re experiencing, your goal is to solve your problem as quickly and successfully as possible. You can write an email that results in a solution to your problem without having to go back and forth with details. This lesson explains how you can get a solution to your problem after one email.

This training video explains how to write an email intended to persuade the reader.    You write an email to persuade when you want the reader to perform some action, believe some point, or otherwise be persuaded to act or believe as you expect.  It may be that you want a budget increase, the use of additional work-space, a new software program, or any of the many other actions that the reader can perform for you if you’re successful in persuading the reader to your point of view.