Professional Email

Criteria for Success:

Successful professional emails:

1. Use a brief, direct subject line
2. Maintain a professional tone throughout the message, including an appropriate greeting with title/name and an appropriate conclusion and signature
3. Prioritize the most important information, and eliminate unnecessary details
4. Are direct and concise, but provide enough information–such as contact and timeline information–for a complete response with limited back-and-forth

Structure Diagram:

Identify Your Purpose:

For any professional email to realize its full potential, it must be 1) opened, 2) read and understood by the recipient, and 3) capable of supporting an appropriate response. An email designed to maximize clarity and readability will have better chances of success at each stage.

Analyze Your Audience:

Professional emails should maintain a fairly formal tone throughout, to show that you understand the role and value the time and the response of the recipient. Start off on the right foot with the proper title (see Skills below). Additionally, the message should include all the necessary information for your target reader(s) to fully understand and respond–but no more information than this. Researchers, administrators and other scientific professionals are extremely busy and inundated with emails. Getting straight to the point maximizes their time, and improves the chance that your full message will be read. 

Skills Required:

Use a Strong Subject Line

We all get more emails than we read each day. Your subject line should convince your reader that this message is important and relevant. Including very specific keywords will make the content of the message clear—and this will also help in case your recipient needs to search for the message at a later time. 

Additionally, subject lines might get truncated on phones or tablets. So it’s best to make the subject line brief, OR try to place important keywords first in the subject line, so that they’ll be read, even if a phone chops up that message. 

Here are some examples of how to apply these strategies to improve wordy, vague, or back-heavy subject lines:

Use Appropriate Titles/Introductions

When corresponding with someone for the first time, it’s a good rule of thumb to USE THE MOST FORMAL TITLE that is appropriate.

Possible titles, in decreasing order of formality:

Dean/President/Provost

Professor

Doctor

Mr./Ms. (avoid Mrs. Or Miss) 

Similarly, if you’re corresponding with someone for the first time, be sure to open with a formal introduction, such as “Dear Title Name.” If you do not know the exact group or recipient, you can use “To whom it may concern at/with Group/Organization.” These formal introductions may feel awkward or stiff, but are the most professional and polite way to introduce your message. Throughout your message, maintain respectful, professional language. After you receive one or more replies, you may be able to switch to a less-formal tone, if that matches the formality of the response(s) you receive. (But when in doubt, it’s always best to err on the side of too formal or too respectful, especially when communicating with someone in a senior or supervising role!)

Don’t Bury the Lead

Front-load your key point/goal as soon as possible, ideally within the first few lines of text. This increases the likelihood that your most important information is read and addressed. Similarly, if you are providing a list of questions or issues (see below), make sure to cover the most important/urgent questions or thoughts first, and work down through less important details. 

Make it Brief, Clear, and Informative

There are several actions you can take within the body of your email to make your message clear and concise.

1. Use short, succinct sentences. Use active verbs and eliminate unnecessary details. A concise sentence is much more likely to be clear… and more likely to be read in full! 
2. Emphasize important points of your email by bolding or italicizing dates, locations, questions or keywords.
3. Visually separate distinct topics by inserting additional spaces between paragraphs.
4. Make use of numbered lists (like this one!) if you have many important questions or thoughts. Try to limit each numbered entry to a single topic or thought. This helps the reader keep track of what you are asking, provides a template for their own answers, and helps ensure that all of your questions get addressed in the response. (Generally, it’s best to place the most important question or point first–but you can also consider how the order of your questions will best help accomplish the objective of your email.)

While succinct and direct, your email should still include all the information the recipient needs to respond completely. This includes:

1. 1. How should they contact you? If you need to include information such as a phone number or address, make sure to do so. 
   2. When do you need a response? If the issue is time-sensitive, make sure you communicate any deadlines you are working with (and make sure that you provide a reasonable window of time for responding or completing tasks).
   3. What should their response include? Make it clear what you need–do they need to provide specific information, contact a certain person, or answer a certain question? The clearer you are in communicating your goals and needs, the better chance that your recipient will understand how to address them.

Example of these principles in action:

Resources and Annotated Examples

Annotated Example

41 KB