• The Promotion Strategist

Professional Email Writing and Why it Matters

To: Promotion Strategists

We’ve all seen the lazy business email before.  Lazy business emails are the ones that have no format. They have typos, poor grammar, doesn’t have a proper business email format. Even worse, the person doesn’t even take the time to sign their name at the end – letting their email signature do the work for them.  That’s just poor professional email writing, and it’s going to harm their career growth.

Let me give you some email writing tips, show you how to start an email professionally, and how to end an email professionally. Let me tell you why it’s important to check your emails for typos, why you should start your email with “Hi” instead of “Hey”, and why you should generally put more effort into professional email writing.  So here we go, email writing tips that will help you not just sound smarter, but help you advance your career too.

Why professional email writing is important

It’s not just about sounding smart! Every time that you write an email you are showing the recipient and your colleagues cc’d the quality of your work, your understanding of the material, your ability to communicate things that matter to all parties, and your language competency.  These are very important things to make sure you’re good at since at the end of the day if your boss doesn’t think that you can speak or write an email properly, then how can they give you more responsibility?  When you advance your career you’re likely to be interacting with more experienced, higher educated people. How can your boss let you do that if they don’t think you’re good enough? After all, you’re a representative of the company, and if you come off as unintelligent or lazy via email then that’s the image that you’re giving to the other person – whether they’re a customer, a prospect, a partner, or an industry friend. Images are everything, so you need to ensure you’re making your boss proud of the one you give off.

It may seem like no big deal, but trust me.  The way that you communicate with people in your office and outside of it have more of an impact on your ability to climb that career ladder than you think.

How to start a professional email

My recommended way to start a professional email is to just say “Hi name, ” then go into my message. It’s a classic and it works! Fun fact: I once lost a job offer for starting my acceptance offer email with “Hey name,”. Learn from my mistake and only start an email with “Hey” if you’re confident that the other person will receive it well.  If you’re not good friends, just say “Hi”. Once you are 100% certain that the person on the other end of your email will be OK with you saying “Hey”, just don’t do it.

How to end a professional email

My recommended way to end a professional email is simple.

If you’re asking them for something say “Thank you” or “Thanks”If you’re letting them know something that helps them say “Best” or “Very best” or “Cheers” or “Best Regards”

Aside from those email tips, just be sure to type your own name in. It shows laziness when you say “Thanks” and then let your email signature be your name. Show them that you care and you will get promoted faster!

To sum it up, my recommended professional email format looks like this:

Hi name, Hope all is well. Words, words, words, words that they’re going to understand and appreciate receiving. Very best, Name

Work Hack

If you’re not great at grammar or spelling then you can always take classes, or if you’re like me take the easy route and download the Grammarly plugin in Chrome.  It’s what I’m using right now to ensure that I sound book smarter than I am.

So there you have it.  If you want to advance your career, put more effort into professional email writing.

– Your Job Coach, The Promotion Strategist


©2020 by The Promotion Strategist