Writing a Great Email

Since I have been working in  a corporate culture, I have noticed that a lot of communication is done through email.

Email has become a huge communication tool in all of our workdays. The biggest risk in using this tool can be miscommunication. We could almost all agree that face to face conversations are less likely to have communication breakdowns than email, but this isn’t always feasible.

I have had a great deal of emails blow up in my face because I wasn’t clear or concise on what I was saying or whatever I had typed was taken the wrong way. This is why you must take just a little extra time before hitting that “send” button.

To clear this up I’ve started to write emails like I see web sites written; easy to use and easy to skim. Here is an example of an email that could be hard to read:

Hey John,

I made the changes that you wanted on the site.

Thanks!
Ryan

This could work, but I almost guarantee an email will come back from John saying, “What site was that again?” or “Did you remember to change the content images?” There is some room for improvement:

Hey John,

I made the following changes to the Wong Wong & Luk site:

• Changed the navigation button from “About Us” to “About the Firm.”
• The lower nav and main nav now match
• The content images on the home page have changed per the PSD

http://wongwongluk.com

Let me know if you have questions

Thanks!
Ryan

This us much easier to read and the content is laid out in a scannable format. Using things like bulleted lists, bold and links can help a great deal when communicating