Hello and welcome to our Business Email Etiquette. Most people have experience in writing emails at some point before in their lives. However, the emails an average person writes are probably personal emails and not mails for work purposes.
Emails you send to friends are incredibly different in content and context to business emails you would send to customers or employers or even other colleagues in your workforce.
So, if you have a job that involves you writing emails to people in business style, learning business email etiquette is an absolute must for you.
1. Heading layouts
When you are sending emails to friends, you generally lay them out like a memo. This means there is very little detail in the layout besides basic greetings and paragraphs, usually starting with the greetings.
However, with a business email, it is best to lay it out exactly like you would lay out a formal letter. You need to put the company’s address in the right-hand corner and the date as well. Only then must you go on to the greetings.
This will make your email look more formal, making you seem like a professional who knows what they are doing as opposed to someone who just couldn’t be bothered spending the extra time to get the layout right.
2. Proper greetings
When you are sending an email to a friend, you usually greet them informally. If their name was Mary Johnson, you’d probably start your letter with a ‘Hey Mary’ or a ‘Hello Mary.’
However, this is not considered a professional way to write an email to a customer or other important person in your business. Again, you must use the proper method that you would greet someone with were you writing them a formal letter instead.
If your customer is Mary Johnson again, you should greet her with respect. ‘Dear Ms. Johnson’ would be the most appropriate way to start off your letter’s actual body in this case. If you do not know the recipient’s name, then you should start with a simple ‘Dear Sir or Madam.’
Politeness will always get you incredibly far, no matter what line of work you are in.
3. Informal language
You should get straight to the point with your email. Don’t dawdle on with it like you would if chatting to a friend and don’t write it how you would speak either.
You use language that sounds impressive and smart while not using such obscure language that your recipient doesn’t know what you are saying. All the time, you must keep it informal where possible, possibly even impersonal as well.
It will make you seem very professional in the long run.
4. Signing off
When you are sending your email, you must end it as you would with a letter also. Don’t just say ‘Bye’ and your first name; that is too personal.
You need to say ‘yours sincerely if you know the name of the recipient and ‘yours faithfully’ if you do not. Then you should end with your full name and whatever position you have at the company. (CEO, technical staff etc.)
So there you have it! All you need to do now is to show your boss that you can handle the emails from now on!
