Email remains one of the best ways to contact people online as a business or as an employee. When you write emails to people, you have the opportunity to communicate, interact, and build relationships with them. If you want to improve your email writing skills, then look over these six important tips for effective email communication.
1. Structure Your Emails
Are your emails typed out in a single paragraph? If your emails don’t have a structure, you cause the following problems for the people that receive your emails.
- You make it difficult to read the email.
- It can be difficult to identify the point of the email.
- It can be easy to lose track while trying to read the email.
Just like with all other types of writing, you need to follow a structure when it comes to emails. This includes adding subject lines, giving a call-to-action (CTA), putting your signature at the end, and other key points.
As you follow a structure for your emails, you make it easier to write them while making them easier to read. For example, imagine if this article didn’t have headings, paragraphs, and bullet points. It would be difficult to follow along and understand its purpose. The same applies for your emails: you should structure them in a way that makes them easy to understand.
You can use multiple features and techniques to structure your emails. Subject lines let recipients know the purpose of the message, CTAs let them know what they must do, and a signature shows them the authenticity of the email. As you find ways to structure your emails, you will make them clearer for your audience.
2. Add Images and Visuals
While some people may send emails with just text in them, you can boost engagement and interest from people as you add visuals. Many people respond well to visuals because they draw attention, quickly show important information, and make it easier to read through emails. But what types of visuals should you add to your emails?
As you can see here, nearly 2 out of 3 businesses feel that original graphics and videos help them to achieve their marketing goals. These two visuals work well for people because they quickly display and summarize information, making it easier to process and understand. Each does so in a different way that can help you to improve your emails.
Original graphics, such as infographics, can show people the data to make it easier to understand while videos and presentations show them the information while explaining it. By using these visuals, you can make your emails easier to understand and provide something that can break up the text.
If people struggle to understand your emails, or if you want to give them an extra flair, then add some visuals that will add to the email.
3. Consider Your Audience
An audience in this situation refers to the recipients of your emails. Email marketing is a part of your sales strategy. Whenever you send emails to others, you need to consider how they feel and how they will react to your messages. This can include customers, your boss, and even some of your friends.
For example, if you want to do an email campaign for your business, then you might want to keep the tone professional. This way, people will take your business seriously. However, if you send a message to a coworker, then your tone could be business casual.
Try and ask yourself some of these questions so that you can consider your audience.
- Did I write anything that would offend or make the audience feel uncomfortable?
- How would I react to this email if I was in my audience’s shoes?
- What can I adjust in my email to better fit the audience’s needs?
Spend some time thinking about these questions and change your email based on the answers that you come up with.
4. Personalize Emails
Whenever you send emails to people, you want to make sure that you personalize them. This means that you make changes to the email to show the person that you know them.
For example, you can include names in the subject line and at the start of emails to let your readers know that you meant to send the emails to them. This is a very simple rule — and it works simply because emphasizing your name has a direct impact on how you perceive the communication.
When you personalize emails, you can increase your open rate by nearly 30% and your click through rate by about 40%. Personalization works because people appreciate it when others show that they care enough to mention their names. Even if you don’t own a business, personalized emails can help you in other ways.
- Giving an explanation if you send an email to the wrong person.
- Ensuring the recipient that you didn’t send them spam.
- Encouraging people to open your emails.
No matter what, it doesn’t hurt to include someone’s name in emails. It shows care, respect, and thoughtfulness on your part, so this can help your relationship with that person while sending an important message.
5. Find the Right Time
As you send out emails to people, you may notice that your metrics change depending on the time. This is because many people don’t look at their emails every waking moment. Instead, they find time to check it throughout the day, so you need to find out the best time to send emails.
As you can see in these statistics, you’ll most likely get the highest open and click rates around 8 a.m., 1 p.m., and 4 p.m. This means that you should try and send emails around these time frames so that more people will see them. If you send emails to friends or coworkers, then think about their schedules and send them close to the time that they would check their inboxes.
Either way, you should try and send emails during ideal times to increase the odds of people opening them.
6. Give CTAs and Follow-ups
Whenever you send out an email, you should always include a CTA. CTAs allow people to know what you expect from them: this can include a response, sending an attachment, or interacting with your business. Even when you email friends, you can send CTAs in the form of questions to get a response from them.
If you don’t get a response from people, then make sure to follow-up. This involves sending them another email to see if they had time or the opportunity to complete the CTA. Follow-ups work well as reminders for customers to look at deals or coworkers to finish a task that you need them to complete. You can follow-up in a variety of ways.
- Send another deal to remind them about the CTA.
- Ask them if they did what you wanted them to do.
- Tell them another detail about the CTA so that you can indirectly remind them about it.
As you provide CTAs to people, make sure that you follow-up to see if they accomplished the task that you gave them.
Conclusion: Effective Email Communication
Whether you run a business or send emails as an employee, you should always strive to have effective email communication. By applying and using these tips, you can improve your communication with your co-workers, friends, and customers through emails. Be sure to bookmark this article so you can revisit for future use!
Further reading:
