Write Better Email in Less Time
Every day there is a natural inclination for each of us to spend an inordinate time on email. We understand from experience that each client can read a lot into the emails they receive from you. Our tendency, then, is to make sure our communication is clear, accurate, and, well, pretty…
The trap is that it becomes easy to get locked in a sea of revisions instead of spending time on more productive activities. So in order to get better results in less time you have to focus on one underlying principal:
Eliminate redundancy.
A really easy (but rarely used) tool is email templates. When I first got turned on to this trick, I had it in my mind that email templates were for cold calls, marketing blasts and the like. But when I sat down and thought about all the emails I send, I realized there was far more redundancy than meets the eye.
Consider:
- Meeting invites, follow up notes, action item assignments
- Technical qualification emails sent to audience members before a presentation
- Product or industry news/updates you may send to a group of your customers
- Debrief emails to your extended sales team (even more beneficial if there are standard fields or data needed for your sales process/CRM)
- Reminders of logistics for presentations, demos, etc.
- Prep requests for on-site evaluations
If you’ve ever shown up on-site and wished you had a piece of information beforehand, simply think about what standard process you could use to make sure you captured it every time before you would need it.
Automate Process
For example, imagine there are 10 prerequisite pieces of data that you need to install your product in a lab. It’s easy to assume that the customer will have the needed data, but we know that is not always the case. Why not craft the ideal email you’d like to send to a prospect beforehand and save it for reuse (more on this in a minute).
Let’s take this a step further now and imagine that if you only ever had to craft this email once, how much time could you spend making sure it was absolutely perfect. A lot more than when you need to do it every time, certainly. Thus, templates are a dirt simple way to save time and is a great opportunity to perfect the style of your communications.
Creating Templates
Templates are available in every desktop email client I am aware of (even GMail too). Since 80% of us seem to be on Outlook I’ll start there.
- Craft the ideal message including any/all fields that might be reusable (CC, Subject, etc). Keep in mind that because you’re doing this once you can afford to get a little fancier with tables, shading, and fonts. There are also a plethora of free, pre-built templates on Office Online and various productivity websites
- Once you’ve filled out as much as you can for a generic email, go Save As > Outlook Template. You’ll likely have to scroll down to see the Template option
- It will be saved as an .oft file. I recommend you create a folder for them off your desktop or start menu so you can get to them in a hurry. Name it something logical since you may end up with a dozen of these or more.
The Perfect PoC
Once you’ve got the idea down, step back through your last few proof of concepts. You can start with reviewing past emails, but you will likely find there are new possibilities to automate or improve some aspects of communication you didn’t consider before. Systematically apply the approach to all of your email interactions and refine your templates over time as you start to use them and figure out what’s missing.
The next time you run a PoC, it may not be perfect, but you’re email communication certainly will be…
[EDIT: By request, I uploaded a generic template I've gotten a lot of milage from. Get it here.]
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Filed under: Productivity, Soft Skills, Time Management
