New guest post alert! Today we will have the joy to read some great tips for writing successful pro emails from Hannah Stevenson, Content Marketing Manager at UK Linkology.

With so much going on in the world right now, companies are facing the need to focus on efficiency in every aspect of their business if they want to survive. One easy step of improvement is to make sure that your emails are always professional, engaging and informative. That doesn’t just go for newsletters, templates and planned mass email sends- even short everyday emails should be professional.

Professional Emails

Hannah Stevenson: “By making your emails read well and removing any typos or grammatical errors, you’ll show that you’re the right person for the job, which is particularly important when you’re trying to clinch a sale or just a good impression over email.

As a professional copywriter who runs a content marketing service and pitches content ideas on a daily basis, I understand the need for professionalism in emails and every other written medium.
That’s why I’m happy to share my guide to writing professional emails that will present you in the best possible light with you. All of my tips are easy to implement so that you don’t have to invest a lot of time to reap the rewards.”

Understand The Purpose Of Your Email And What Readers Want From It

The first step towards creating great content is to understand its purpose and what recipients want from it.

Once you have this information, you can create quality content that meets their needs. This approach is particularly valuable when writing pre-written email templates, but it works well when you’re just firing back a quick response.

Writers often create audience personas when they’re writing content, so that they can understand what their readers expect and then deliver it. You don’t have to go that far for every response you send, but you should answer a few quick questions in your head before you fire off an email that leads to a back-and-forth:

• Will the reader understand technical terms, or should I use plain language?
• What are they expecting from my email?
• How much information do they already have on this topic?
• What is the purpose of this email- marketing, sales, etc?

Even if the email is a response to a question or query, you need to consider what you want the end goal to be- a sale, brand recognition, etc.

By understanding what your readers want from your email, you can save yourself time by delivering it in the first email, rather than creating a long email string. – Hannah Stevenson

Get Your Pre-Written Template Created By A Professional

If you send out a lot of pre-written templates for sales and marketing campaigns, then consider working with a professional corporate copywriter.

They can save you time and produce a high-quality, perfectly proofread template that will engage and entice customers. When working with outsourced content writers, you should also provide a comprehensive brief, so that they know exactly what you’re looking for and can reduce the number of edits that you need to make.

Tell them the style you want, the audience you’re targeting, and any necessary information that each email needs to contain. They can then turn your notes into engaging emails that will serve your purpose.

By investing in expert content writers for your pre-written content templates, you’ll improve your chances of converting leads and earning more sales from your newsletters and email marketing campaigns.

Make Your Subject Line Stand Out

As average attention spans are as little as 8 seconds, you need to make sure that you’re making an impact before you even get someone to open your email.

After all, if they’re skimming through their inbox and are unimpressed or unsure about your subject line, then they’ll be unlikely to even open your email, meaning that you’ve wasted your opportunity to engage with them.

Worse still, if they think that your subject line is suspicious, then they might mark your email as SPAM. Being marked as SPAM can have a number of consequences, including impeding deliverability and damaging your domain reputation.

To avoid this, you need to make sure that your subject lines are short, snappy and original, but that they also convey everything that the reader needs to know about the contents of your email.
Try to make them factual, whilst also teasing the recipient if you’re sending out a cold email. For newsletters, you can get a bit more creative, while you should remain factual and to-the-point when writing follow-up emails.

At the end of the day, the subject line you write will depend on the purpose of your email, so you need to refer to the above paragraph and try to understand what your reader is looking for in your email when trying to compose the perfect subject line.

Begin Every Email With A Positive

Starting an email with a positive, even if the email is a rejection or refusal, will make a good first impression and encourage your recipient to open it quickly.

The initial use of a positive phrase will ensure that your reader associates you with positive feelings and show your manners. This last point is particularly crucial- increasingly, individuals forget basics like please and thank you in their emails, and this can make them look unprofessional.

No matter how busy you are, make sure that you always thank people for everything that they do for you, apologize for anything that you do wrong, and say please for anything that you need.
These small acts of kindness will make your recipients more inclined to help you and provide you with what you need.

If you’re selling to them, then good manners will encourage them to trust you, as they will feel like they’re getting excellent customer service before they’ve even bought anything from you.

Use The Right Anchor Text For Any Links

When sending links, it looks more professional if you add a hyperlink to a word or phrase, rather than including the full URL.

If you understand how to use anchor texts for link building and other digital marketing practices, then you shouldn’t find it too hard to apply these tactics to your emails. Simply find a relevant phrase or word and add your link. Most email providers allow you to add links by right-clicking easily and then selecting ‘link’ in the dropdown.

Using the correct anchor text will improve the usability of your email content- if readers want certain information, then you need to make sure that the anchor text tells them what they will learn if they click on the link.

If the anchor text is irrelevant or unclear, then readers will not stay on the page for long, and they might also distrust the rest of the information that you’re providing in your email.

Limit Your Use Of Emojis

Everyone loves emojis- they’re so popular, there’s even a movie about them (spoiler alert: don’t watch it)! They’re so popular that more than 10 million emojis are sent every day, but in professional emails, you should limit the number that you use.

Emojis should be used sparingly in the same way that you use exclamation marks- to make an email sound friendly and informal. For example, if you were writing a very basic email, you could use an emoji to make you seem more approachable.

OK, I look forward to receiving that soon.

In short emails such as this, it can be hard for readers to understand the tone, and sensitive readers might feel threatened or underappreciated. While you could mediate this by signing off with Thank You!, another tactic is to use a smiley-face emoji.

OK, I look forward to receiving that soon. 😊

The emoji shows that the message is positive, and ensures that there is no confusion as to what tone you are using. However, you should limit your emoji use, because using too many can make you look unprofessional and childish. They can also distract from the main purpose of your email, and if you use too many, they can look spammy.

Also, some emojis are simply inappropriate; there’s everything from a poo emoji through to vomiting faces out there, with more being created all the time. Always avoid any potentially offensive or disgusting emojis to ensure that your email looks professional and conveys your message clearly.

Read Every Email Through Before You Hit Send

When you’re firing off quick replies, it’s easy just to type out a response and then hit send without reading it through from start to finish. You might think that this approach is a waste of time, but you might spot inaccuracies that could cause confusion and lead to follow-up emails.

By removing these issues, you can save yourself the effort of replying to more emails and answering questions that wouldn’t need to be asked if you’d read your original email in the first place. You can also spot any pesky typos and fix them so that your email always looks professional and well-written.

Conclusion

Writing professional emails, be they marketing emails that convert prospects into leads, sales emails that turn leads into paying customers, or just updates and newsletters, can be a challenge.
When done right, emails have the power to grow your business and show the author as a consummate professional.

I hope that you can implement some of these tips into your own marketing and sales strategies, or just into your everyday email writing habits.

Happy emailing!

About Hannah Stevenson

Hannah leads the Content Marketing team by example, developing strategy, writing content and passionately promoting it. She is the former Senior Editor of an international publishing house and is loaded up with a Master’s in English Lit and Film Studies and a BA Hons in English from Chester Uni.

As the Content Marketing Manager at UK Linkology, the UK’s highest-ranking link building agency, Hannah Stevenson understands what makes great content, and is eager to share her tips with business owners from across the corporate world.

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