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How to improve my business email writing skills

How to improve my business email writing skills is one of Google’s highest-ranked recent searches.

Why?

Because we all want people to read what we’ve taken the time to write.

And often, we can see it’s failing to cut through.

On our business writing training courses, we see this all the time.

Let’s share three quick tips on how to make your writing better.

And, if you keep reading, there’s a discount code for an e-learning writing course at the end.

Here we go.

What happens when we press ‘send’

Picture someone that you email regularly, but have yet to meet.

You’ll have an idea of their personality, their approach to problems and decisions.

You may even have constructed an image of what they look like.

That’s because every time you receive an email, you’re forming an impression.

And every time you send one, the recipient is forming an impression of you.

A good one, a bad one, a memorable one, an instantly deletable one.

We’ve run more than 4,000 training seminars since 1989.

Here’s what the people on those courses tell us.

And here’s what your emails say about you.

1) The sender values my time

Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway penned the following short ‘story’ to win a bet:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”.

These six words create an enormous amount of emotion, even empathy.

The word ‘worn’, rather than ‘used’ humanises the sentence.

The brevity of the advert suggests financial poverty.

A need to sell, despite the emotional distress.

So much can be said in so few words.

I estimate that 50% of what I read in emails could be cut.

The key is always to ask:

“How much does the recipient need to know?”

That guards against cutting out so much that you lose the context.

Here is a guide to making your writing brief, like Hemingway.

Lasting impression:

Your audience will see that you’ve valued their time by removing unnecessary context and detail.

So they’re more likely to give you their time in the future.

2) The sender talks in plain English

“Keep it simple, stupid”.

The U.S. Navy’s KISS design mantra stands strong in our business writing courses.

I ran one in Glasgow recently, when one of the attendees wrote about the impact of buying plastic bottles in the company’s cafe, rather than reusing personal water bottles.

She wrote:

“Stop burning your bonus.”

Each year, the team receives a group bonus based on the company’s profitability.

By filling up the recycling bins with plastic waste, they were spending money unnecessarily.

That could be saved by reusing plastic bottles rather than buying new ones.

It was thesimplest, briefest terminology.

It hit the audience between the eyes with the ‘what’s in it for me’, in four words.

Lasting impression:

People will understand what you’re asking for.

So they’re more likely to act quickly than if it’s laced with jargon.

Here’s more on writing clearly.

3) I trust what the sender is telling me

Here are two typical ends to an email:

“All being well, I’ll try and get it to you by Friday 1st May”.
“I’ll have it over to you by Monday 4th May”.

On first impression, the former feels stronger because it’s earlier.

People like getting things early, right?

Of course, but they prefer commitment.

Offering commitment is one of the best ways to build trust.

Even if it means telling them it’ll be three working days rather than two.

So consider what you can commit to, then remove words like ‘hopefully’, ‘try’, ‘all being well’ and ‘do my best’.

Lasting impression:

Your word is your bond.

You’re someone to be trusted to get things done.

Here’s more on offering commitment.