In your professional life, email is probably one of the most important means of communication. You do it every day, and if you are anything like me, you are drowning in it.
Of course, you can devote an hour or two a day specifically to managing your email. But if you spend 10 minutes or more on each reply, email will soon take up your entire day, and turning off Gmail notifications won’t save you.
This is why it is so important to learn how to write professional emails that need to be answered and written in no more than a few minutes. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a great writer or productivity guru to do this today. It’s all about finding the right strategy and set of tools to implement it.
Prepare Email Forms (Canned Responses)
Creating email templates is a great time-saver for those who often receive the same questions or comments via email. Spend a day creating response templates and you no longer have to write the same responses ten times a day. Both Gmail and Outlook have this feature to help you save time and automate your email for free.
Here’s how to set up professional Gmail email templates in just a few clicks:
- Once signed in to your account, click the gear icon and select Settings.
- Then go to Advanced and click Enable next to the Templates option. Scroll down the page to save your changes.
- You can now start working on your own email templates. Enter the text you want to save in a new email. Then click the three vertical dots in the lower right corner and select Templates to save the draft as a template.
You can create answer templates that contain long paragraphs as well as quick answers for 2-3 sentences. You will be surprised how much time they will save you in the future.
mails Web Networking
If your problem is not using email templates, but creating them, try Networking Emails It is a web-based tool with dozens of email templates to help you expand your professional network.
Online emails created with Resume Worded are a great resource for streamlining your communication. Some examples of templates they offer include cold / warm introduction, unanswered question answering, and even writing thank you letters.
Each template also contains helpful tips and suggestions that can improve your communication with the recipient.
You can use the search button or browse the list to find the email address you want. Then all that’s left to do is copy and paste it into the message box and change some of the details.
Word Counter Plus
If you write more than 10 emails a day, it’s important to keep some of them short and clear. Therefore, if you often receive too long emails, you may want to consider using a word counter to stop yourself. The Chrome extension Word Counter Plus can do the job for you.
Highlight text in your email and find out the number of words and symbols you have used with one click. You can then continue writing your email, or complete it before it becomes two-part.
Draft Map
You can find many great tools to help you write better and thus reduce the time you spend proofreading and rewriting emails. DraftMap is one of them. Think grammatically or Hemingway, plus it also checks for unnecessary repetition of words and helps you stick to the same writing style.
This Chrome extension gives you real-time color-coded writing hints. This will help you avoid passive vocabulary, typos, clichés, and advice on email readability. All suggestions are based on Ernest Hemingway’s writing rules. DraftMap is especially handy because everything happens right in the email composing field.
Don’t worry if you’re still highlighting words after you’ve finished editing your email. The recipient will not see the color, the offers are visible only to you.
Your email could be better
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Your Email Could Be Better is an online tool designed to reduce the time you spend managing your email by teaching all the best email techniques.
When writing a professional email, you follow certain rules. For example, make sure your post has a clear subject line or the exclusion of unnecessary attachments. You’d be surprised how often people break these rules, resulting in both parties spending more time and effort.
Your email might have a better list of 10 common mistakes. Each point is accompanied by an explanation and examples of how to improve your email. This can come in handy when you want to educate your colleagues about these rules but are unsure how to do it. You can use your own words or send them a link to your email address. It may be best to illustrate your point.
We all want our email to be fully automated and not require any attention. Although this is not possible today, every little thing helps. Whether it is shortening the length of an email or the time you write, once you set some rules, you will notice your first improvements.
If you just can’t stop writing long emails, it might be time to ditch email entirely. Instead, try using your account manager (CRM) or Slack to exchange messages with colleagues. At the very least, it will help you spend less time on email.
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