Writing an

effective

Email
Part 3: The structure

Bonus slide about

KIND REMINDER!!!
 1
The Flow

Email is like an essay.

It consists of:
Introduction
"Thesis statement"
Body
Conclusion
 2
Introduction part 1
Before going directly to the topic of your email,
you should have an introduction.

The intro can consist of one or more parts.

First part is usually the continuation of a greeting,
and depends on various factors, such as:
Who is the recipient of your email
Are you addressing one or multiple people
Is it the first email, RE: (reply) or FW: (forward)
If it is a RE:, what was written to you in that email

Example of a greeting + intro part 1:

"Dear John,
Hope you are doing well.
...

Depending on the situation, intro part 1 can be skipped

 3
Thesis statement
After the greetings and optional intro,
we have to explain why we are writing

It is best to get right to the main point. This is called the

Thesis Statement

Your reader must see what the email is about so they

can write you back. If they don’t see it, they might think
that your email is not important and skip it, forget it or
respond too late. Here is an example of
Greeting + Intro + Thesis Statement:

Dear John,

Hope you are doing well.

I am writing to you regarding the Progress Report on XYZ

Project that you sent me yesterday...

Thesis can be anywhere in the text, but it is best to write

it in the beginning, except for specific situations
 4
Body
Now that the recipient knows who writes to them and
what they want, we can proceed to explaining the details
and write The Body of our letter.
Now our email will look like this:

Dear John,

Hope you are doing well.

I am writing to you regarding the Progress Report on XYZ

Project that you sent me yesterday.
I noticed that you showed “Installation of Software” activity
as completed, but I just spoke to James and he told me that
they haven’t completed it yet...

We have explained John that there was something wrong

with the report that he sent yesterday.
In the next step we need to explain what exactly we
need from John.
 5
Conclusion
In the last part of our email, we write
what we need from John.
Our example is simple; in reality, both the body and the
conclusion can consist of several sentences and paragraphs.
Before saying goodbye, it is also a courtesy to write something
like, depending on the context:
If you have any questions, please let me know
I look forward to hearing from you
Thank you for your time and attention
Feel free to reach out if you need further assistance
Let’s look at the complete letter, which includes farewell, too
Dear John,

Hope you are doing well.

I am writing to you regarding the Progress Report on XYZ Project that you
sent me yesterday.

I noticed that you showed “Installation of Software” activity as

completed, but I just spoke to James and he told me that they hadn’t
finished it yet.

Please investigate this issue and get back to me by the end of today.

Let me know if you need any assistance.

Thank you,
Howard
 6
Tips and tricks
Always remember a few things:
1. Never assume without facts! Investigate and check first
before assuming something about anything or anyone
2. Have all the required data! If you don’t have all the
data, facts, and evidences you need, your letter will be
incomplete
3. Consider that your recipient might be busy. Try to keep
the email as short as possible. But make sure to address
all relevant issues
4. It is OK to send reminders, but it should be done
correctly (check out the next slide!)
5. Always keep your calm and stay courteous. If someone
has done a bad job or made a mistake, etc. keep calm. If
we take our example with email to John, there are a lot
of possible scenarios.
Maybe John is actually right and James confused the
completed activity with another one? You never know until
you check.
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Bonus slide:
Sending reminders
I once received a kind reminder. There was nothing kind
about it. The whole email looked like this:

KIND REMINDER!!!
In short, DO NOT do this.
It is a lot better to use something like one of these:
Could you please provide an update regarding...
Could you please advise the status of...
If you need any assistance with ... let me know
I hope all is well. Haven’t heard from you in a while and
just wanted to check in with you regarding... (this
version is for people you know well)
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