Improve Email Communication With These 13 Tips

7. Pay attention to the tone of your email.

“Pay attention to the message you’re sending! Focus on clarity and tone, and think about your relationship to the recipient. When communicating by email you want to build relationships, not dismantle them.”

– Cherie Kerr, President of ExecuProv, @ExecuProv

8. Don’t send ‘angry’ emails.

“Be very careful about responding to someone who has made you angry, unfairly criticized your work or hurt your feelings. Reply only in polite tones and reserve expressions of frustration for the telephone or face-to-face communication. If you’re unsure about how a message might be perceived, ask a peer or trustworthy colleague to review it before you send.”

– Kimberly Gerber, Founder and CEO of Excelerate, @exceleratecomm

9. Always demonstrate relevance.

“All emails should include some sort of value to the recipient. This would be in the form of your relevant or desired business opportunity, or maybe feedback and optimization ideas for current collaborations, industry insights, or an upcoming event that’s relevant to them.”

– Sam Goldberg, COO and Co-Founder of PaeDae, @PaeDaeWins

10. Use apps to enhance email communication.

“Try using apps that help transform the communication with multimedia. I often use jing.com to capture a short video and then paste the link into the email. The customer clicks on the link and can watch the video. I also use ‘extra voice recorder’ to record an audio message and then I include that with the email. Clients love the added effort.”

– Casey Gollan, Director of Casey Gollan Business Coaching, @caseygollan

11. Know when to ditch email and call instead.

“When clients are given more than one question to answer at once, they can often forget to answer them all. If you have a lot to ask and need a lot of information, then it is almost always better to get the client on the phone.”

– Heather Craik, Owner of Shades of a Dream, LTD., @ShadesofaDream

12. Always remain positive.

“It’s easy to misconstrue meaning or intent via email, since it’s all text-based with no personal interaction. To combat this, keep your tone consistently friendly and amenable. If conflict ever arises, deal with it via phone or in person. This way, email communication will always remain positive, which makes prompt responses and an open line of communication much more likely.

– Jennifer Barbee, Founder and CEO of Jennifer Barbee, Inc., @jenniferbarbee

13. Ensure emails are coherent.

“If your client has numerous questions, then answer them in the same sequence. There is nothing worse than opening an email that is one really long paragraph about six different things you’ve talked about in the last several days.”

– Stacey Harris, CEO of Hit the Mic Marketing, @TheStaceyHarris