How to write an email people can act on

Email is your central communicatrion medium. If you nail them you increase your efficiency significantly. And, never write anything in an email that you would not want everybody to read

The goal: make the message as readable and as fast to act on as possible. The recipient should understand what you need in seconds, before they have read a paragraph of context.

Here is the version most people send.

Hi Moritz,

Hope you are well. As you know we launched the customer survey two weeks ago and we have been monitoring responses since. The panel has been performing broadly in line with expectations, although the screener has been tighter than anticipated in the DACH region. We now have 543 responses and I have started to pull together the emerging patterns. There are a few things in there that I think are worth discussing, particularly around willingness to pay and the switching behaviour of the smaller accounts, which does not look like what we assumed in the hypothesis. Would you have time for a call at some point?

And here is the same email, rewritten.

Hi Moritz,

Do you have 30 minutes later today to discuss emerging insights from the customer survey (N=543)?

Three things stand out so far:
- Willingness to pay is ~15% below our hypothesis in the mid-segment
- Small accounts switch far more readily than assumed, which affects the churn model
- DACH screener is tighter than planned (N=61)

Happy to send a short pre-read beforehand if useful.

Easier to read and much more informative.

The structure

1.  Open appropriately. For a first email to a client, or after a break, use a proper opening: “Dear Mr Schmidt” or “Dear Anna” depending on the relationship. On an ongoing thread, “Hi Anna” is fine. Match their tone, and when in doubt be slightly more formal than you think necessary.

2.  Introduce yourself if they do not know you. One line. “My name is Moritz, I am part of the Bain team working on the commercial due diligence.” CC your supervisor for validation. This avoids the awkward “who is this person” moment on the client’s end.

3.  Bottom line up front. The key ask or key message goes immediately after the greeting, ahead of the context. “Do you have 30 minutes later today?” before the explanation of why.

4.  Necessary context below. Structure as much as possible. Use a list. Bold the one thing that matters most. Mark dates and deadlines so they stand out. Focus on the most important topics only. Add more extensive context after the main body of the E-Mail (e.g., full list below and the calculation in the attached Excel).

5.  Re-read once, start to finish. Early on you will draft and re-read ten times to cut it down, which is good practice. As you get better, move towards writing it in one pass and reading it once. The shorter you managed to write it, the faster the check.

Tone

Professional but human. Write like you speak, only cleaner. If you would not say “please find attached herewith” out loud, do not write it. “Attached is the updated model” is fine.

Avoid fillers and extensive politeness: "I would very kindly like to ask for your valued input on the collected priorities you will find in the list below" --> "Could you provide input on the priorities below"

Bold selectively, one or two phrases per email. Bold the deadline, the ask, or the decision needed. If everything is bold, nothing is.

And always specify time zones. Never write “let us meet at 3 p.m.” without one. Write “3 p.m. CET / 9 a.m. EST,” and put both into the calendar invite.

The Email Knigge

There are many opinions on professional email etiquette. These are the rules that reliably kept me from stepping on anyone’s toes. They look like small details, and people notice all of them.

Address order matters. It shows you thought the email through, and it is a small token of respect. Client addresses first, then other external partners, then your team. Within each group, order by seniority, most senior first. At equal seniority, alphabetical if you cannot decide. So: client head, client manager, lawyer partner, consulting partner, then the rest of your team by seniority.

Do not CC unless necessary. Every additional person spends one or two minutes reading and deciding whether to respond. With ten people, that is up to twenty minutes of firm time on one email. Learn the preference of the person: “shall I CC you, or just update you on the important developments?”

Check the file names you send out. Nobody outside your team should ever receive “Client Model_v56_initialDraft_commentsMSO_rv_cc.xlsx.”

Before you press send

Three checks, in this order, every time.

1.  All receiving parties. Right people, right groups, nobody accidentally included on a thread they should not see.

2.  The subject line. Specific enough that it can be found in six months.

3.  The attachment. Actually attached, actually the right version, actually cleaned.

Then build in a one-minute send delay in Outlook. It costs you nothing and it will save you at least once a quarter.

And one rule that sits above all the others: never write anything in an email that you would not want everybody to read. Live your life like a defence lawyer. Emails outlive projects, get forwarded, and turn up in places you did not anticipate.

START THIS WEEK

1.  Take the last three emails you sent to a supervisor or client. Rewrite each one with the ask in the first line. Compare word counts.

2.  Turn on the one-minute send delay in Outlook today. It takes ninety seconds to set up under Rules.

3.  For one week, before every external email, run the three checks out loud. Recipients, subject, attachment. After a week it becomes automatic.

The recipient should be able to gauge what you need in seconds. Everything else in the email is service.