Resource Centre e-mail Tips

Making Your e-mail More Effective

Now that e-mail forms part of the corporate culture, questions arise about efficiency, effectiveness, and etiquette. Here are a few tips to help you achieve the effect you want.

1. Recognize that e-mail uses a visual (emotional), not an analytical medium. Unless you take special precautions, it's easy to upset your audience.
2. Recognize you're dealing with a conversational medium that makes the writing style chattier and less formal.
3. For important e-mails, print out your message before you send it. This is contrary to the idea of a paperless office. Unfortunately, unless you read hard copy, you cannot readily analyze what you wrote. If you use screen-only editing, your e-mail may cause an unexpected emotional response from your audience.
4. Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Preferably use bullet points for quick and easy reading.
5. Pay extra attention to visual appearance.
   • Bullets
   • Numbers
   • Headings
6. Write benefit-oriented headings to make your e-mail more persuasive.
7. Avoid overuse of highlighted text (boldface, caps, italics, underlining). When used sparingly, they add impact; with overuse they lose emphasis.
   Note: All capitalized text is very difficult to read, and comes across as AGGRESSIVE or RUDE.
   
8. Keep the message short to maintain the reader's attention. On-line readers will usually avoid scrolling through more than two to three screens.
9. Like your reader. This helps create a positive tone. Think of one person you like, even if writing to a large group, and consciously like them. Enjoy writing to them. This friendly tone will transmit into the text. If you are irritated, the tone will appear in your e-mail and likely irritate your reader.
10. Consider starting sentences with "ing" endings if asking for action or giving advice. It makes the writing more friendly, and less bossy.

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