Ah, email: The ever tricky and immensely popular form of communication that has spread like wildfire through almost every industry around the globe. It is so popular, that many times the only way that you communicate with your clients is through email. This makes it even more important that you take extra care when writing work emails. With this in mind, here are some of the things I keep in mind when writing emails to my clients.

*Note: While the main topic of this article concerns writing emails to your clients, this can also apply to emails you write to your boss or other people who are influential where it concerns you.

The first thing that you should do before you even start writing is to plan exactly what message you are trying to get across. While this sounds like common sense, the problem with a lot of emails in general is that they read too much like a train of thought. Remember, just because it’s email doesn’t make it informal. You should approach writing these kinds of emails just as if you were presenting the contents to your clients. You wouldn’t ramble and skip from topic to topic in a live presentation, so don’t do it in your emails.

After you’ve figured out exactly what you want to be the focus of the email, it’s time to start composing. A descriptive subject should be your first start. This is very important for any work email, but for clients it’s doubly important. Your client probably gets tons of emails a day, so you need yours to stand out if you want it to actually get read. Make sure that the subject is short and to the point. Once again, rambling serves no purpose here. Also, if your email references events that happened on a certain date, try and put that date in the subject. An example of this would be “Status Report for 10/10/06″ instead of just “Status Report”. What you don’t want happening is that your client ends up with multiple emails with the same subject, as this just makes it that much harder for them to find the information they are looking for.

Nailing the greeting is next on the agenda. Once again, another simple task, but one that is still a problem in a lot of client emails. The key here is to occupy the middle ground between extremely formal (”Dear Mr. Smith”) and extremely informal (”Hey”). Using the person’s first name is usually a safe bet. If you are addressing multiple clients, it’s acceptable to use the word “All”, or if it’s only two people a combination of first names (such as “Jim/John”). I’ve seen some people not use a greeting at all, which I think is a mistake. It’s much too casual and it makes it look like your email is off the cuff instead of thoughtfully written out.

Now to the heart of the matter: The body. This is a tough one. Here are two guidelines that I always follow: Be formal (nothing new here), and be complete. What does complete mean? Complete means that your client shouldn’t have to ask you any questions regarding your intended message once they’ve read the email. A tangent to message, ok. The message itself? No, then it wasn’t clear enough. One of the worst things that can happen is that you start an email chain whose sole purpose is to clarify your original email. Clients and co-workers alike hate this, and it makes it seem like you either don’t know what you’re talking about or you don’t care enough to explain properly. Both of these hurt your credibility, especially if it happens all the time. Eventually, they could just start to disregard your emails.

All that’s left to write is the closing and your signature. Not too much brain surgery here, make sure to use a formal closing such as “Sincerely” or even “Thanks” works. Some people use the “-” and then their name, I think this is too dismissive. Your signature should contain additional contact information besides your email so that if any questions arise you can be reached.

The entire purpose of keeping these things in mind is to keep your client happy. If your client is happy, your boss is happy. If your boss is happy, you should see some of that happiness starting to roll down hill.

For additional tips, you can see the post I wrote awhile ago on Professional Email Tips.