Tips & Tricks .

How to Write a Better Business Email

Email is the most efficient communications tool that you will ever use in your business. If used properly, it can instantly enhance your business by increasing profits and reducing expenses. Through daily use of email any business can communicate with existing customers, vendors, employees, and friends, as well as find and cultivate new customers. Email is also a great way to get thousands of people to your website.

Here are a few tips:

Write your emails as you would a letter. Always use a capitol letter to start a sentence and always use proper punctuation, grammar, spelling, and spacing.

• Be very polite and businesslike.
• Write your email from the standpoint of the reader. The more information you give that will help the reader, the more likely they will want to visit your Web site.
• Use short paragraphs and add a blank line between paragraphs. Avoid long run on sentences and avoid putting your entire email in a single paragraph. Space out your email like you would a letter.
• Find creative ways to ask the respondent to reply to your email. Offer to send them out a regular email newsletter.
• Be sure to include your full webpage address in your email. Give it to them as follows, so it is a clickable URL that will take them directly to your website, like this:   http://www.jvlnet.com
• It is OK to send a single un-solicited email to a potential customer, but state in your email that you will not send any follow-up emails to anyone who does not respond with a request for more information.
• Keep your initial email brief.
• Have two or more places on your Web site that the potential reader can click on to send you mail. One can be a standard line such as "Click here to send me mail." You might also create an email link to your name at the end of your site. The more possible ways of getting people to contact you the better.
• Sign your email, just like you would a letter, with a proper salutation and your name.
• Edit your copy carefully to avoid false or misleading claims. Read the email over completely before sending it. Does it get your message across properly? Can you make it more exciting to read? Did you include your complete webpage URL? Did you use proper grammar and spelling? Are you sure the email is still worth sending?
• Once you do hit the send button, the email will check itself for spelling. Be sure you have spell check turned on.
• After the email is sent it will be copied to your sent file. You could then move specific sent emails into other folders for more efficient storage and sorting.

Email has great potential for personal and business use . Used correctly it can generate much good will. Used poorly it can hurt people and waste their time.