It may sound like a simple task…

But more people struggle with properly building a professional email.

In my last post I talked a lot about an email that I sent out when asking for products to review.  That email was very carefully crafted and everything in it served a purpose.  Being in marketing and working with different companies, I both receive a lot of emails and see a lot of people craft emails that make me cringe.  Why? Because they crafted in haste, overly casual and aren’t given the respect they deserve.

Here’s the thing – And I’m not the only one that feels this way, there are a ton who do: If you are going to ask me to give you time out of my day, which is what you are doing when you send an email, then at least take the time to pull something solid together.

We’ll break it up into sections:

It’s Not You, It’s me:

Your email should not be about you.  It should not be written from your perspective.  If you are sending me an email – write it with me, my goals, my challenges, my busy schedule in mind.  Please, please, please do not start off your email with “I” or include yourself in the first sentence at all.  Remember you are trying to get me to give you MY time.

Start it off with a greeting an my name.  Then break the ice.  Try something like this:

Good Morning Maggie,

It’s a pleasure to reach out to you today. You’re sure to be busy wrapping things up for the week, but if you could just give me a moment of your time, it would be greatly appreciated.

Notice there isn’t an “I” in there.  It’s all about the email recipient and their day.  Let’s keep going.

Introducing yourself

This part is tricky.  I’ve just told you not to make the email about yourself, but you do need to include a little bit of information about yourself so that your email recipient knows enough to care.  If I don’t know who is sending me the email, and if it feels remotely like some mass email send that I’m getting because someone sold my email address and I’ve wound up on some God awful list, I’m not likely to be very receptive to your email.

This is how I normally introduce myself:

By way of introduction, my name is Maggie Franz.  I am the Director of Community Growth for Idea Hunt, and am contacting you today to invite you to join our vibrant and engaging community.

Notice how, as my mom says, I “got in, got it done, and got out”.  I took a moment to introduce myself, and gave my title so they know what it is that I do, and then brought the email back to them.  Give your reason for emailing them right after your introduction because if your recipient can’t easily or quickly glean what this is all about, they are going to send your email to the trash can, or worse, mark it as spam.

Get to the Point, and Tell them What It’s All About

Now that you made you’ve said hello, told them who you are and what you want, it’s time to give them the supporting information that they’ll need to read on. You’ll want to make a switch here, long form paragraphs and prose are long and hard to read – some people have a harder time reading on their computer screen or don’t have enough time to sit and read three paragraphs.  You want to format your email so that if someone quickly scanned it, they could still get the important information.

To illustrate this, I’ll bring the whole email together and show you what I mean.  In the following example, let’s say that I am wearing my Idea Hunt cap, which I often do, and sending an email to invite a new user to sign up for idea hunt:

Good Morning Maggie,

It’s a pleasure to reach out to you today. You’re sure to be busy wrapping things up for the week, but if you could just give me a moment of your time, it would be greatly appreciated.  By way of introduction, my name is Maggie Franz.  I am the Director of Community Growth for Idea Hunt, and am contacting you today to invite you to join our vibrant and engaging community.

Idea Hunt is an online idea crowdsourcing platform that connects users, with startups and companies in need of creative solutions.

Users love Idea Hunt because it:

• Is free and easy to use
• Brings together entrepreneurs and professionals of all kinds
• Provides challenges that require creative problem solving for the chance to win prizes

Companies love to use Idea Hunt to:

• Solve problems or challenges
• Host Competitions
• Collect user generated content which they can feature in marketing campaigns
• And so much more!

By using Idea Hunt, you can connect with companies, entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, data specialists, web designers and more.  Every day you’ll find new ideas and creative solutions that you can implement outside of the platform.

You can try it for yourself here.

If your time and schedule permits, I’d very much like to speak with you about your current role and how you might benefit from using Idea Hunt in your spare time.

Thank you very much for your time today and I look forward to speaking with you further.
Sincerely,

Maggie Franz
Director, Community Growth
Idea Hunt
Skype & Twitter: M2franz

Notes and Takeaways:

How many times did I reference myself?

At most, 3 times.  The overall gist of the email, is about them – how Idea Hunt can benefit them.  I said before and I’ll repeat it again here – please do not start your email with “I”.  Look at the phrases below – they all make the email about you, the sender, from the very get go.

“I’m emailing you today because”

“I know you’re busy but…”

“I just wanted to check in…”

Notice the spacing – Using white space makes your email easier to read.  You don’t want to send an email full of bullets and bolded words.  Use a couple of full sentences where it feels natural, and when you find yourself getting into the important or gutsier items, thats where you can start to break it up and use a few bullets.

Be sure to thank them.  If they took the time to read your email, they did what you asked them to do, and they deserve a genuine thank you.  For some reason, I’m noticing people skipping out on this one.

Be professional but be yourself.  If you don’t normally start off your emails with “Dear So and So” don’t force yourself to.  You can use: Hello, Good Morning/Afternoon, Hi, or just start off with their name.  Pretend you’re writing someone a letter, yea, by hand.  It will help to put frame the email in the right way, rather than a quick shot from the hip type of communication.

A little Aside:

I once worked with someone who, after saying Hello, exclaimed Happy “Insert whatever the day of the week it is here” to every single client email.  While saying it some days is fun and might be a way to show your personality, every email makes it a bit fake.

Lastly, do yourself a favor, and read through it – out loud or even mouthing the words as you go (If you’re surrounded by co-workers, it’s a bit hard to read things out loud).  This will help you to make sure that your email is grammatically sound, words are all spelled correctly, and that you have a fully formed and complete thought that you are sharing with your email recipient. Listen for over used words, especially “I”.  And if you are attaching anything – make sure it is actually attached.  I’ve forgotten so many times that it’s embarrassing.

That’s it! Have a great weekend!