Email guidelines

Workers frequently send emails to stakeholders that require acknowledgement or a response. Usually, the most important emails are requests for feedback or important notifications of changes. It can be frustratingly difficult to elicit a response from coworkers, so I’ve developed the guidelines below to optimise emails for a prompt and useful response.

Propose an approach and set a deadline for feedback

When requesting feedback, you will often want stakeholders to help you to decide how something should be done. Wherever possible, try to propose a specific approach rather than asking open-ended questions. This way, you can move ahead even if people fail to get back to you.

Do

• Propose defaults for everything so you can move ahead if you don’t get a response.
• Give stakeholders a deadline for their feedback.

Hi Jane,

We will start to implement the training component of our new employee onboarding process from next week. By next week I need to know if you are happy with the below, otherwise we will push ahead as planned:

• New employees will be encouraged to book live training sessions, but are permitted to watch pre-recorded sessions if they prefer.
• Jane will be creating a new pre-recorded product demo next week.

Thanks

Don’t

Ask open-ended questions that stop you from moving forward until you get an answer. Fail to give stakeholders a due date for their feedback.

Hi Jane,

I’m hoping you can make a call on a few things for the new staff onboarding plan:

• Should it be required for staff to book training sessions, or should we enable them to watch pre-recorded sessions instead?
• Who should we ask in Sales to record a new product demo for new staff to watch?

Thanks

Keep emails concise and link away for further reading

There is a much greater chance that people will understand your message and give you a response if you keep it concise.

Creating a Confluence or Notion page for any major announcements can be a good practice before you draft your email.

Do

• Only include critical information in your email.
• The most important content should be at the top of your email.
• Link away to Confluence or SharePoint for further reading (for those interested). This could be a link to the initiative brief or a link to a purpose-built page for the decision you’re notifying people about.
• For essentially long emails, include a TL;DR at the top.
• Embrace bullet lists.

Hi team,

We are rolling out our new leave policy next week on Monday the 14th of July. Employees are now required to submit leave through this new form.

For further reading, see the documentation for this policy on Sharepoint.

Cheers

Start with action items

Action items in emails are easily missed. Include them at the top of your email to ensure people see them and can be fairly held accountable.

Do

Start your email with action items. Assign action items to a specific person. Set a deadline.

Hi team,

Action Items

• @Jane: write up some customer comms for this change by Friday July 14th.
• @John: create a list of customers who need to receive this email by next Tuesday, the 2nd of July.

Further notes

…

Cheers

Don’t

• Bury action items in a long email.
• Assign action items to a group of people.
• Leave action items unassigned.
• Fail to set deadlines.

Be very specific with dates

As an international company, dates can be confusing (US date formats do not match the rest of the world). To ensure clear communication, use specific date formats in all communications.

Do

Use specific date formats that:

• Have no risk of confusing day and month (e.g., 2022-05-01 is obviously May, spelling out the month name is even better).
• If something is within the next two weeks, specify that (e.g., say next week or in two weeks time).
• If something is within the next two weeks, include the day’s name.
• If something is on a Monday, specify this.
• Specify timezone where relevant.

This initiative will go live next week on Monday the 4th of July (Australia time).

Don’t

Use vague or internationally confusing date formats.

• This is due 7/5
• This is due 7/5/21
• This is due in a month
• This is due a month from today