Be Accurate Be Brief Be Clear Be Genuine Speak Their Language Put Ourselves in Their Shoes Watch Out for a Knowledge Gap Write Business E-mails as Letters, Not as Ads Take Our Time

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2.2.1 Rules of Writing Business E-mail

In order to provide the right impression of our business house and ourselves, some rules suggested by Soltoff 2003 are presented below.

2.2.1.1 Be Accurate

Any claims made, benefits offered, or statistics quoted, make should be true and not inflated. Nothing is worse than starting off a relationship with exaggerated or even false information.

2.2.1.2 Be Brief

The most important benefit to the recipient needs to be identified and summed up in a short paragraph.

2.2.1.3 Be Clear

The message should be well-prepared so that there are no misspellings as well bad grammar making the content unintelligible.

2.2.1.4 Be Genuine

Since business relationship is built on trust, everything we say should convey you are a genuine, upstanding, honest person running a reputable business.

2.2.1.5 Speak Their Language

People tend to understand and react better to words they use in everyday conversations. Therefore, anything we are going to say in our business e-mail should be written in words the recipient understands and are comfortable with.

2.2.1.6 Put Ourselves in Their Shoes

We should try to picture the daily routine of the people we are contacting and reflect that in our writing, e.g. I know youre busy, so Ill get right to the point. 18

2.2.1.7 Watch Out for a Knowledge Gap

We should not assume recipients have the same knowledge about our product or service we do. After we have captured their interest and have reached the additional information stage, we should try to offer a step-by-step walkthrough of whatever we are marketing to help them understand what we are trying to say.

2.2.1.8 Write Business E-mails as Letters, Not as Ads

A forthright communication in letter format is much more effective than an e-mail that looks and smells like an ad.

2.2.1.9 Take Our Time

We should show our business e-mail to colleagues and other business people before sending it to get their opinions since in almost every case other peoples input will help us improve our messaging and writing.

2.2.1.10 Prepare Your Subject Line Carefully