Email Optimization Tips For Everyone

Get your email read, understood and answered quickly.

Email is one of the easiest and most efficient ways for us to connect. Even with all the amazing advantages there are also many drawbacks. Those drawbacks include our messages not appearing relevant to our readers, the risk of sounding rude or bossy, buried action items, overuse of Cc: and Reply All, and we can’t forget the sheer quantity of email we get every day.

Let me help you improve your day and get your email read, understood and answered quickly.

The email etiquette techniques I’m sharing work whether you are using email as general business correspondence or if your work is to develop promotional email and email marketing messages. I’m confident these simple techniques will help you build a personal and professional brand that will make you proud.

Why listen to me? Great question.

As a business owner I know that if we waste time, we lose money. I also know if we build a poor reputation, we lose money. And, like you, much of my day is spent writing email to clients as well as writing marketing related promotional email. But that’s not all. I’ve also been teaching email etiquette for close to 20-years. So, in all ways possible I know how important it is to maximize the benefits of email and minimize the challenges.

To keep things positive, let’s talk about some email benefits before we talk about how to overcome some email challenges.

Email Benefits:

1. We often get to write our messages when we have time.
2. We can review what we write (and edit) before we click send.
3. We can send consistent messages to many people with one click.
4. Documents and links are easily included.
5. A message history is created and can be revisited later.

Email Challenges:

1. We are often overloaded with many daily work email as well as promotional email.
2. Because it’s free, there is no noticeable cost disincentive to write one email instead of sending a cascade of ideas… or even better, have a robust and creative phone or Zoom conversation.
3. Overuse of Cc: and ‘Reply All’ which is easy for the writer but wastes time for many other people.
4. Subject Lines are often meaningless, confusing or misleading.
5. When we build a reputation as rude, arrogant or bossy we often never know, but our relationships keep getting worse.

3 Important Email Optimization Tips

Our reputation always proceeds us. In just seconds readers use three things to decide if they want to open and read our message. They use:

1. Our name or the name of our company (do they trust, respect and value us?)
2. Our subject line (is it descriptive and motivating or leave them guessing?)
3. Our first sentence or two (are we getting them interested?) 

Tip Number 3.

Get to the point. Save casual talk to the end. For example:

Hi Bruce,

Can we have a 3PM Zoom meeting tomorrow to discuss training options?

Let me know if you can and I will send an invitation.

Hope you are having a great day.

Jeffrey

In this example the reader doesn’t even have time to decide to read it – they just do. It is polite, friendly, has all the important information and, it is easy for them to immediately respond… so they will.

Tip Number 2.

Use five to seven words to describe the purpose of the email. For example:

Zoom Meeting Request: Discuss Training Options

These six words describe exactly what the email is for. A request, a zoom meeting, and discuss training options. It also makes the email easily searchable months from now.

Tip Number 1.

Tips 2 and 3 help you manage your readers expectations and be respectful. Another way to be respectful and not sound abrupt or bossy is to say Hi, Hello or Good afternoon like I did above in tip 3.

The power a respectful greeting is amazing.

BONUS Tip: Use Bullet Points.

I encourage you to use bullet points whenever you can.

Even if you have only two things you need your reader to know or do, bullet points will help people read your message faster and increases their comprehension. They also take the guess work out of your email. Use them just like I did throughout this article.

Whether you use email as general business correspondence or to develop promotional email and email marketing messages, I cannot stress the value of bullet points.

Conclusion:

When you use these tips, you will be building a great personal and professional reputation. You will also

• Spend less time writing email
• Consistently get a high response rate
• Spend less time following up on unanswered email

Thank you for reading. If you have a moment, please share what tips you use.

Bruce Mayhew is a professional development trainer, executive coach and conference speaker. Mayhew specializes in soft skills like leadership and new leadership development, motivation skills, generational differences, difficult conversations training, change management, time management and email etiquette. Learn more at www.brucemayhewconsulting.com.