4 Tips to Writing Effective Emails Blog Feature
Steve Bookbinder

By: Steve Bookbinder on July 1st, 2013

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4 Tips to Writing Effective Emails

sales | Digital Media Landscape | business | marketing

desktop_pc_man_computerSalespeople tend to try to do too many things within e-mails.  In this post, we’ll be talking about e-mails that can help you get an introduction to a customer that you’re trying to prospect to. 

There are four things to consider:

1. Strategize all of the lines of the E-Mail

Who are you addressing the email to? Think about the “to, the cc, bcc, replying, replying to all, and forwarding.” Or are you simply composing an original email, which is almost always the safest route?

When you get an e-mail, it’s very difficult to safely reply “to all” without somebody receiving something that they didn’t want.  On the other hand, if you don’t reply “to all,” sometimes you’re not informing all the parties involved.  When you receive an email, look at exactly where it came from, and who all the other people that were associated with it are. 

In regards to forwarding versus “replying to all,” there’s a chance you may make a mistake one day. You may simply reply or “reply to all” when you meant to forward it to somebody else.  These things can happen; think of it as a rite of passage.  However, you do want to minimize the frequency of its occurrences.

 

2. Strategize the Subject Line. 

Think very carefully before you reply. Strategize the subject line.  The subject line is what’s going to catch their attention.  Your email is competing with every other email in their inbox and everything else on their day. 

A great subject line will have them open the email.  A bad subject line will have your email remain unopened or deleted forever.  Also, if you do reply to an old email in one of these follow-up moments, think about changing the subject line to something else if you’re no longer talking about the same thing.

 

3. Remind yourself to keep it short.

Make sure you to keep your emails short.  And please, no attachments.  No attachments until you’ve spoken with your contact.  If it’s absolutely necessary, you put their name, comma, space, write your note.  If it’s not absolutely necessary, don’t do that because they already know who they are.  And all their e-mails are theirs.  So anything in their e-mail box is a letter to them.  So of course, it’s them.  So think about that because it provides formality.

4. Proofread hard before sending. 

 Make sure that you’re sending it correctly. It’s worth your time to consider cutting it down.  You don’t know what’s going to happen to your email.  You’re going to send it to them.  They’re going to forward it to somebody else.  It may be archived somewhere.  So think about how your email will look over time.  

1. Consider strategizing all of the lines including the to, cc, and bcc lines, and choose whether to “reply to all, forward, or compose” an original.

2. Strategize and update the subject line when appropriate.

3. Aim to keep your emails short. Don’t add attachments until after you’ve spoken.

4. And finally, proofread to the fullest extent before sending.

  
How do you strategize your emails? Please leave your feedback below!
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About the Author:

Steve_Bookbinder

Steve Bookbinder is Co-founder and CEO of Digital Media Training, a training partner to some of the most successful sales organizations around the world.  DMT delivers training which treats sales as a competitive sport and changes behavior needed to help sellers consistently win.  DMT is a leader in M-learning training reinforcement with a proven track record of improving sales through training. Steve has delivered more than 500 keynote speeches at national sales meetings, conducted more than 3,000 training workshops and trained, coached and managed more than 35,000 sellers and managers from leading companies around the world for more than 20 years.

 

About Steve Bookbinder

Steve Bookbinder is the CEO and sales expert at DMTraining. He has delivered more than 5,000 workshops and speeches to clients all over the world and has trained, coached, and managed more than 50,000 salespeople and managers. Steve continuously refreshes his training content to reflect his latest first-hand observations of salespeople across industries and regions. Through him, participants in his workshops and coaching sessions learn the best practices of today’s most successful sellers and managers across industries. Steve understands that sales is a competitive game. To outperform competitors and our own personal best results, we need to out-prospect, out-qualify, out-present and out-negotiate everyone else, not merely know how to sell. Through his specialty programs in Pipeline Management, Personal Marketing, Great First Meetings, 2nd-level Questioning, Sales Negotiating, and Sales Coaching, Steve trains sales teams to master the skills they need to overcome the challenges they face in today’s world… and keep improving results year over year.

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