How can I make my emails more professional in 2024

Over 330 billion emails are sent each and every day. From adverts that go straight to your spam, to important business emails, that’s a lot of sending and receiving. If you’ve found yourself reading this article, the chances are that your inbox is fairly busy during the average nine to five. However, in the midst of all the emails you send each day, it’s easy to forget just how important the composure of a good, professional email is.

If you work in sales, a professional email could be your foot in the door. If you’re sending an email to a boss or office superior, it can help you stand out from yours peers. And for independent businesses and individuals, it can help people take you seriously. That’s why today, we’re going to help you with the key components to consider when creating your email, from the language and lexical components, to the actual email address itself.

Why is it important to know what makes a professional email?

With the ever-increasing reliance on digital communications, whether it be emails, texting, or social networking, people are slowing becoming more efficient in interpreting text. For example, you currently have in your head an idea of how this text is being written, even though you have never heard my voice, you are interpreting it and the message I am conveying. The exact same goes for email. When writing and presenting an email, the smallest details contribute to how other perceive your message. This can be the difference between people ignoring or immediately answering your email.

Knowing how to write a good email can also contribute to the following:

• Reputation: Your professional standing hinges on showcasing dependability and effectiveness, shaping how colleagues, managers, and prospective clients or employers perceive you.
• Clarity: Building and reinforcing professional connections relies on delivering substantive information to those who seek your insights.
• Efficiency: Employing straightforward language simplifies procedures and prevents counterproductive confusion.
• Progress: Cultivating respectful communication can pave the way for securing desired opportunities such as job offers or proposals.

With all this in mind, you should now have a rough idea of why you strive to improve your business emails. When looking at what makes up an email, there are three main components we should consider; the content, the personalisation, and the email address. First, let’s look at the content.

Improving the content and language that goes into your professional email:

Let’s look at the typical content of an email from top to bottom:

Subject lines

Starting with the subject line, you really don’t want to exceed any more than 50 characters, or about 7 words when writing a subject line. For colleagues and those you regularly contact, use key words that will help them to understand what the email will contain. It may seem ridiculous, but many workplace emails often use vague subject lines and repeated words that may trigger spam filters.

For those you do not know, or not know well, using action verbs (doing words that make the reader want to take action ie. buy or schedule) and collective pronouns (words that help you address a group or a business (ie your brand new…) help to instantly engage people. For example, for a company trying to sell printers, “Let’s talk about your new printer” works much better than something like “printers for sale” because it makes the recipient want to talk to you.

The main body

Now let’s talk about the bulk of your content. Don’t worry, we won’t fill this part with another English lesson, instead, let’s talk about “cheat sheets” that can make writing emails much easier. Grammarly is a free grammar assistant that was originally great for checking over your work for mistakes. However, with the introduction of AI, you can take any body of text and ask Grammarly to change it, make it sound more professional, or any other change. The great new change will help your emails instantly improve.

Signing off

Finally, you need to consider how you end off. While there are numerous choices for concluding an email, it’s advisable not to attempt to create a new standard. Opt for a reliable option such as:

Sincerely,
Thanks again,
Best,
Warmly,

Making your emails look good:

Whilst you may think that making emails ‘pretty’ does not contribute to professionalism, a visually appealing email can help yours stand out from a sea of basic emails. This doesn’t mean that you need to go over the top with images and visual spectacles. All this will do is overwhelm your recipient (unless of course you are constructing a ad campaign, in which case you should consider email marketing). There are some easy ways to customise your email, starting with the font.

Fonts and typography

Using a consistent font and text size across all emails will help people to recognise an email as yours. Additionally, using different fonts can become too much, and make your text tricky to interpret. However, don’t let this stop you from making parts of your text bold, underlined or in italics to help convey importance where it is needed. If you have a consistent font or style you’re using on your website or blog already, you can easily carry that over.

Email signature

Your email signature is a unique and customisable way to end your emails. Typical signatures include your name, profession, company logo, and sometimes ways in which people can contact you via email or telephone. This is a great way to help people take you more seriously and to help convey what kind of company you are. Take a look at the example below of what you should strive for your email signature to look like:

Your profile image

Finally, it is important to consider using a profile image, and if so, which one? Okay maybe the picture of you on holiday looks great, but a portrait shot in work clothes, or an image of your company logo offers a much more professional outlook on you as an employee or manager of your company.

Your email address

Finally, the most important thing to consider when sending a professional email is the email that is sending it. There is such a difference in a client receiving an email from “yourname@free-email-service.com” and receiving an email from “info@yourcompanyname.com”. Whilst it is a small difference, it is the first thing someone sees when they receive an email notification, and can be the deciding factor as to whether or not they bother to even open your email. If your small business uses a free email service such as Outlook or Gmail, you may be wondering how expensive it is to upgrade your email to a professional standard. Well the answer is cheaper than you are probably expecting.

Email plans can be expensive, but we’ve scoured the internet and found the most cost-effective email plan, whether you’re a small independent business, or a large, established company. The answer lies with The Elite Web Co. From just $1.95, you can gain access to professional email using your website’s own domain name. This allows you to set up custom email addresses that can be applied to all of your work needs – whether it be info@, support@, or custom names for members of your team. Here’s what you can expect your professional email inbox to look like (although you should bear in mind it’s customisability):

For small businesses, one, or a couple email addresses should suffice. But what about larger companies? Don’t worry, you can easily scale the amount of email addresses you purchase for the amount of employees you have.

Conclusion

Some people will tell you that email is becoming outdated, that Teams messaging or Zoom calls are here to replace it. The truth is that an email is just a letter, and letters have been round for hundreds of years. So who knows how long we’ll be emailing for? This makes knowing how to construct a good email evermore important, so I hope you’ve learnt how to do so in this article.