E-mail is a convenient and fast means of communication, which allows not only to exchange text messages, but also to send documents, images and other types of information. Electronic business correspondence has not yet replaced the paper letter, but as a means to promptly resolve various problems (preliminary agreements, study objectives, technical coordination, supply of services, and so on.) it occupies leading positions.
With regard to electronic business correspondence etiquette, there are valid the same rules and regulations that are specific to any other form of business cooperation, especially due to the way of information transmission - the use of e-mail programs and services that have a standard interface.
Compositional characteristics of electronic business letters fully comply with generally accepted standards of business correspondence. In traditional letters, as well as in e-mails, there are three compositional elements: an introduction, main body and conclusion.
A number of authors, focusing on the standards adopted by the business community of the West, are calling for maximum liberalization of the forms of communication in e-mails and disregard for spelling, grammar, style, punctuation according to the formula "time - money".
Skywritingservice.com and https://www.ilac.com/10-tips-on-how-to-write-a-business-email-in-english/ collected the most useful facts for you!
The e-mail should be short, concise, but you should remember that the letter recipient will judge not only about you (that is your business card) but also about the organization you represent. And if it is important for you to make this business card look decent, the knowledge of the basic rules of etiquette and strict adherence to them is obligatory. Terms of e-mails are not fixed by any standards or regulations, but are determined on the one hand, with the general rules of registration of business documents on paper, and on the other - with the rules of social networking.
Here are the rules of the correct formatting of the email:
1. Always fill the field “subject” of your letter. If your recipient receives a lot of letters, he can immediately select the desired, guided by their subjects. As a rule, the subject should be stated in a few words, and fully reflect the essence of the written request. Moreover, busy people often send letters without the subject to the trash without reading them.
If the reply to the letter of the subject of conversation is changing, it is necessary to change the subject of the letter.
Writing on a new topic should be started with a new message. It is not recommended to raise the discussion of a new topic reply to the letters on other topics.
2. When typing the response to a letter, it should be either cited fully (if the amount of the text is small), or leaving only the key (important) fragments, which should be separated from the main text of the letter.
Do not start the reply to the letter of the recipient as a new letter (without storing the history of correspondence). Such a response will cause the receiving destination to spend time searching for the original message.
3. Priority. In the case if a letter contains important or urgent information that needs urgent attention, select it, set the importance of "high." This will highlight your letter among incoming mail. However, do not abuse this feature in vain.
4. Do not write the entire text or text fragments in capital letters - it is perceived as an aggression and a roadblock to your interlocutor.
5. Do not use slang, technical terms or abbreviations. The use of abbreviations (acronyms) in a letter can be allowed only if they are well known. If the letter is official, it is better not to use them.
6. To make the letter emotional, it is allowed to use emoticons. However, their use should be moderate, and in strictly official letters they should not be used.
7. It is necessary to try to avoid grammatical errors, their presence can reduce the sender's reputation.
8. Always use a signature that contains some information about you (post, telephone, your company name, and other methods of communication).
9. If the letter is in the form of additional files, the text of the main letter should mention their presence in the attachment. The normal (and reliable) is considered to send attachments without warning, totaling up to 2-3 megabytes. If you want to send large attachments, ask your correspondent if the file will go through his mail server - some people can read mail from their phones.
10. There are different opinions as to whether to make a request for confirmation of the receipt of the letter. Better, of course, not to do so. This irritates people, while others may consider it as a fact that his responsibility is questioned. However, practice shows that postal service sometimes may not work correctly, and the sender wants to be sure that important letter was received by the addressee. So, sometimes this rule is broken for practical reasons.
The structure of the electronic business writing text does not differ from that of its paper counterparts, but there are some features.
Greeting and personal appeal to the recipient builds trust and gives the letter a personal focus. Ignoring the recipient's name is seen as incorrect, and the complete lack of greeting points to some carelessness or lack of manners of the sender. Greetings should be written in a separate line, separated from the main text of the letter. The most common is considered to be a greeting "Hello...", it is more neutral in relation to the time of day compared with greetings "Good morning" or "Good evening", the use of which is relevant only in cases where you know exactly when the person will receive your letter.
It allowed not to greet when the correspondence is conducted for a long time during the day, and is an alternation of questions and answers.
If you are not familiar with the person you are writing letter to, in the first letter you should represent yourself and explain the reason why you are contacting this person.
The main text should be concise, but informative. The optimum size of the text is one page, it should be read at the opening of the letter e-mail program without scrolling. The visual perception of the message, the semantic breakdown proposed in the review of information and, accordingly, its uptake is facilitated by the division of the text into paragraphs. It is better to build up short sentences and paragraphs. If the letter consists of a few paragraphs - it is more convenient when they are separated by spaces.
The final part of the letter and signature is separated from the main text by a blank line. As a final part of the commonly used neutral form: "Sincerely ...".
The requisite signatures do not use abbreviations. The addressee should be clear how to contact the author in his reply. After the name and surname you should indicate the position of the sender and the name of the organization. This will give the addressee an opportunity to understand the boundaries of your office and professional competence in dealing with issues. Further, there may be mentioned: a personal e-mail address, contact phone numbers, addresses, and other methods of communication, links to websites etc.
Time for the response to the letter - is one of the indicators of your position in relation to the business interests of the partners and customers. The companies in this regard, have quite different standards. It is considered to be acceptable response time to a letter within two to three hours. If, after receiving a letter and after reading it, you realize that you can not give an answer within one working day, these are considered to be good manners to send the notification of an information on the receipt of the letter and the possible terms of a response to questions about your destination.
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