One strategy to write an effective email

(Shutterstock)

Writing emails is no simple task. We write a clear and detailed email, but we ended up having to clarify our message through WhatsApp chat a few hours after hitting send. Do they even read the email? We thought.

As the email writer, our intention was to be clear. But sometimes this leads to another problem: overexplanation or being overtly polite. Our message gets lost in the weeds of corporate language, so it merely becomes a formal documentation in case a misunderstanding arises, instead of actual communication.

So, how do we write a readable email?

Some conventional rules (drawn from the wisdom of Google search’s algorithm) remain true:

→ Be concise

→ Have a clear goal in mind while you’re writing

→ Good subject line is everything

→ Use bold/italic/colors to highlight important information

→ Use bullet points to allow effective skimming

I don’t have anything new to add to the points above, but I do have one tip rarely talked about: write your email a minimum one day before.

Sometimes we push email writing towards the very end of our day because we think it’s easy. Afterall, it’s just a summary of information we are already familiar with.

But writing a short email takes a long time. And when this is a note you know your readers can’t miss, then it’s an email worth thinking and writing for a day or two.

Here’s why:

1/ You’ll have a pair of fresh eyes for editing the next day

It always takes some sleep (or at least some kitchen breaks) to reread your text again with a fresh set of eyes. Fuzzy sentences will become obvious. Mistakes will be glaring. Usually this happens only when we’ve made some distance from our text, when we take off our writer’s hat.

2/ It gives you a chance to resend it to yourself and reread it as a reader

Something about seeing an email I sent to myself still tricks me into thinking that it’s coming from someone else. When this happens, we become the reader for a quick second. Is the subject matter engaging? Does it contain a typo?

3/ It gives you a chance to read it from your phone

This is an important one because many people read emails through their phones. Ideally, you’d want the keywords to appear as the first three words in the subject line. That way, it won’t be cut off from the phone screen.

4/ It gives you the chance to ask: How does my subject line look?

Sometimes the aesthetic of the words is just as important as the word itself. Do you need to start with all caps? Do you need to say: “URGENT” to bring attention or does an emoji work? What about a fun emoji?

5/ We often underestimate how much time we need to write effectively

As we have seen, it takes more than one draft to write effective emails. Perhaps that means spending more than one day dedicated to this.

Now that we know a readable email takes a long time to write, how much time would you dedicate to write an effective email?

Michelle Anindya

She is a writer and journalist. She is currently a post-graduate student of Anthropology at the University of Indonesia, focusing on how technology is used in religious communities.

---