Simple advice for business email communication
1 min readJan 10, 2022
- Make your subject line an obvious statement of your intent (e.g. Request for documents)
- Let recipients know what you want them to do in each email
- Avoid back and forth by using if/then (e.g. If you’re available at 1 pm please confirm. If not, then please give me three alternatives that work for you.)
- Always have your name and contact info in the signature line of every email (I have seen emails from salespeople asking me to call them but don’t have their TB number listed anywhere)
- Give your phone number in an easy to read format 5555631910 is lazy and harder to see than 555–563–1910
- Name files based on the recipient’s perspective. For example, if your customer is Apple, don’t send an invoice with the file name “Apple Invoice.” That person ONLY receives invoices for Apple. Instead name the file something they can easily find later, like: “MYcompany-June2021-Invoice”