Crafting Email For Business Communication

Crafting Emails To Use As An Effective Business Communication Tool Emails have emerged as the most commonly used medium for business communication, for both inter department and inter organizational communications. Email correspondence has now earned as equal importance as traditional memorandums, official notices and letterheads have. This was rather unexpected as email is a product of the new generation and is often seen as an informal means of business communication, but it is very effective nonetheless.

Keeping in mind the significance an email holds, the propensity to which it is being used as an alternative to cover letters and prior mentioned business communication tools, one must not forget the purpose they are being used for. There is a certain amount of professionalism which must be demonstrated while crafting a meaningful and comprehensive email and its format remains the same as that of the printed letters and memorandums, but with some obvious alterations.

Talking of “obvious” you obviously don’t need to add a date to your electronic mail as you would in your upper left corner of your traditional business communication document, they have a software which manages all your emails date wise. Similarly instead of adding recipient’s company name, address and correspondent, emails use email addresses, subject line and file attachments. The subject line however must be clear, easy to understand and as an indicator of what the reader should expect to read in the business communication document.

Moving on with your email, you would be required to write a body of your email. Greetings and salutation must be placed on top of the body and should be as formal as possible, in your initial correspondence. However you might tone it down when you move on with the conversation, depending on your work related relations, but for a start, stick to “Dear Mr. XYZ”. To make your email appear like any other business communication tool, you must use “Block Body Style” and add adequate distance, a lines gap would do, between your salutations and the body, paragraphs must also be single spaced.

Similarly, leave a line gap between your body and signature, electronically generate signature that is.

The font style that you chose would also determine the professionalism associated with the document that you dispatch, generally in modern business communication, Arial and Times New Roman fonts are used. You must make sure that the recipient has complete ease in reading the document otherwise it will kill the purpose of your email, so therefore, your business communication must not include any fancy decoration like colored fonts, Bold and Italic text or any of the clip art functions. You might however use them in slightly informal messages, dispatched within teams that too only to highlight a certain pint in focus, otherwise just avoid it.

Once you have completed the body, try to give your letter a smooth ending. Traditionally used words like, “Kind regards”, “Sincerely yours” and the all time favorite, “Thank you” will fulfill the purpose just fine. As said earlier, the tone of formality can go down with the passage of time and increased correspondence and also with regard to the audience of your business communication. Informal terms like ”Best” or “Thanks” can be used, this can also translate into the level of comfort one has developed while talking to the other, which definitely helps in taking the working relation ahead.

Usually the closing signature marks at the end of the letter which gives you details of the recipients, such as, your name, designation, name of the company you are working at and similarly, your contact details. However emails can also add disclaimers after the signature which might help the organization get legal protection and otherwise avoid any possible confusion, therefore it should be carefully crafted and purposefully place in this form of business communication.

Reference: http://www.researchomatic.com/business-communication-trends-150389.html