If you are new to the corporate world, you may be aware that email is king in most professional environments. Even owning your own small business requires a basic understanding of how to operate a professional email inbox.

Fortunately, writing up a professional email is fairly simple, even if you have never done so in the past. We like to use the "Email Formula" to help remember to maintain professionalism and transparency.

1. Subject Line

The subject line is vital to any successful email-– it should contain a brief description of what the email entails. For example, if your email pertains to a coffee order for your shop due the end of the month, you might select a subject line such as: "Magpie Coffee Order | 12.31.23." It should call attention to any important dates, as well as make your recipient aware of any urgent information.

2. Brevity

The email content itself should be limited to important information, not a drawn out conversation. If it requires more than a few paragraphs, it would likely be better handled as a phone call or Zoom meeting. Keep it short and sweet, with only the meat of what needs to be addressed.

3. Sandwich Greetings

While it is ideal to keep your email as short as possible, it is important to remember we are all humabn beings. Humans tend to be emotional, and building professional relationships requires tact and friendliness. When writing your email, add a positive greeting in the beginning, as well as a positive salutation to sign off. This tactic works especially well with delivering news that might be less than positive.

4. Write, Don't Speak

Emails are not phone calls, and are not written to sound like a spoken conversation. Professional emails tend to be more eloquent than spoken conversations or text messages. Keep up on your professionalism with full sentences, proper punctuation, grammar, etc.

Writing a professional email can be overwhelming, but following the above steps can alleviate some of the associated stress. Below is an example of a professional email– once you have one professional email written, you can take the structure and duplicate it for a multitude of situations.