31 Crucial Business Email Etiquette Tips

Nathan Kontny, CEO, Highrise

This is particularly for emails to customers/leads needing customer support. Too many support emails end abruptly and make customer feel like they are bothering the company they are emailing. By asking a question like ‘Does that help?’, you let your customers know you care to make sure their issue is absolutely resolved or they get a chance to keep conversing over email until it is.

Bart Turczynski, Editor, Uptowork Career Advice Website

As an editor, I’m terrified that I might send out a typo-ridden email. I hate to think what poor style and grammar would say about me and my professional competence. I use Grammarly to proofread my correspondence. I might look up certain phrases in Writefull as well. Finally, when communicating with non-native English speakers, I might even scan the message in the Hemingway app. I don’t want to worry about remembering when I should follow up, so I use Mixmax to track my emails and set automatic and manual reminders. Following up matters and is not a faux pas. To some recipients, not following up suggests that you weren’t serious about your idea in the first place.

Ari Banayan, Author, Habit Nest

Take advantage of formatting your emails using bold, italics, and underlining when composing a lengthy email. There are times that we need to put lengthy emails together with extremely important points. Using these three styles can help make your emails more digestible and will point out key sentences to the reader that they should not overlook. Lengthy emails can also become more digestible with bullet points as well!

Meghan Casserly, Staff, Forbes

Only use a high priority flag when necessary. Using it too much will eventually have the opposite effect as the recipients would think you always tag your emails as priority even if it’s not. If your flag is out of line, you can annoy your customers, colleagues, or any people you do business with.

Patricia Simpson, Director, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Check your message for contextual errors that spell check may not catch. Re-read your message before sending it… spell check doesn’t catch everything!

Ty McLaughlin, CFO, OnceLogix

Using “Hey,” “Yo,” or “Hiya” isn’t professional, no matter how well you know the recipient. Use “Hi” or “Hello” instead. To be more formal, use “Dear (insert name).” Using the person’s name in the salutation — “Hello Robert” — is quite appropriate, but remember not to shorten a person’s name unless you’re given permission to do so.

Robin Schwartz, Managing Partner, MFG Jobs

Don’t use background images or stationery. Some email clients like Outlook allow you to apply backgrounds to your outgoing messages. This should be avoided as the images or stationary can take up a lot of space when sending an email. Also, when someone attempts to reply to your email, the background is automatically applied. Stationary with butterflies and backgrounds of your favorite light blue color aren’t meant for your business emails. Keep the font readable and in a color that doesn’t strain the eyes.

Veronique Deblois, Food Blogger, Food and Wine Chickie

This seems absolutely basic but including a relevant email subject line is critical. With the number of emails we receive each day, being able to decipher quickly which emails are pressing is key.

Dr. Melissa Gratias, Vice President, Sandler Training

Too often, the purpose or intended outcome of an email is unclear. To ensure that someone receiving my email knows exactly what to do, I put the words Action Requested: in bold and follow that with, you guessed it, the action I am requesting the reader to perform. It catches the eye, keeps me from copying people who have no actions to perform, and generates results, and not just replies to my emails.

Maryanne Parker, Founder, Manor of Manners, Intl

The person will let you know how to address them in the next email. If the email is signed with the first and last name, then you should continue addressing the person by the last name. If it’s signed only with the first name, then you have the green light to address the individual by their first name.

Alex Brown, Digital Marketing Manager, ProjectManager.com

When sending emails to coworkers or prospects, don’t be afraid to use templates. Tools like BuzzStream, Boomerang, and others allow for the use of customizable templates and tracking when conducting an email marketing campaign. It can be very time consuming to produce original emails if you have a lot of prospects to reach out to. I have found templates that allow for unique customization usually are more successful than individually crafted emails. Crafting templates for different situations, whether you are emailing a coworker, your sales team, or a prospect makes sure that all of the important information is present in the email and in an order that works.

Nate Masterson, Marketing Manager, Maple Holistics

When it comes to sending a professional email, it’s important to remember that you have to be as clear and concise as possible. You want your point to come across easily and take as little time to read as possible. Use numbered lists or visual representations of data to make the information discernible and easy to understand. Spending some time on Photoshop or Excel – or having your in-house graphic designers work on some prepared images — can make this process a lot easier. It’s important to remember that in many cases, the email you send will be the first point of contact that a customer or client may have with your business.

Crystal L. Bailey, Director, The Etiquette Institute of Washington

My goal when setting up times for calls and meetings is to lessen the back and forth. By offering concrete time windows, I find that I’m often able to narrow down a time in 1-2 emails instead of 5-6.

Carol Kaemmerer, Executive LinkedIn Coach, Kaemmerer Group LLC

My favorite business email tip is frequent use of blind carbon copy (BCC). For example, if I want to send an article to several unrelated people, there is no need for them to know who else is receiving it. It seems more personal if the recipient’s name is the only one that appears than if 20 people are shown in the To list. Also, if you’re sending something to unrelated people, it is considered impolite to disclose their email address to people they don’t know. Of course, there are times when it is important to show that you’ve emailed everyone within a work group or team, so use of the bcc is not appropriate in every instance.

Jenni Harris, Regional Industry Manager, EDPNC

A business associate told me a number of years ago that I should always reply to emails within 24 hours, no matter what. Even if I don’t know the answer to a question posed in the email, even if I am in the midst of a project deadline, it is courteous to send a simple response to say that I received their email and will respond shortly.

This does two things. First, it lets the client/customer/sender know that they are important to me and that I am not ignoring them by not responding until days later. Second, it gives me extra time to find any information being requested.

Sharon Schweitzer, International Business Etiquette Expert & Founder, Access to Culture

In direct cultures like the U.S., the best practice is for the sender to introduce themselves by first and last name with some background information in the first few lines. For example, “Dear Ms. Mandell: My name is Sharon Schweitzer, founder of Access to Culture; I was referred to you by …” or “My name is Sharon Schweitzer and I am an International Business Expert writing to you about …” This is especially important when introducing yourself to new contacts, potential customers, clients, and employers who want to know how you received their contact information.

Marina Byezhanova, Cofounder, Pronexia

After meeting a prospective or an existing client, I send them a thank you email before I even leave the parking lot! Thanks to modern day technology, I no longer have to wait to get back to the office where I am bound to get distracted with other priorities. I also want to beat them to the punch to show appreciation for their time. When my contacts receive my brief, yet impressively prompt note thanking them for their time and alluding to a couple of points we touched on during our discussion, they are impressed every single time. I encourage you to try it, and you will reap immediate benefits!

Sophia Lemon, Owner, Photography for Ridiculously Happy People

My tip is for business owners who use platforms like MailChimp to manage an email list. It is very important that you give your list the option to choose how often they receive emails from you. For example, my list has the option to receive emails weekly, monthly, for special occasions, and for special events and contests. Subscribers must always have the option to opt out of emails altogether. Allowing your list to segment themselves will reduce unsubscribes.

Clayton Coombs, Marketer, The Advocates

When sending emails to prospective clients, it is very important to address the individual in a professional but also personal manner. Address the individual by name. Add questions in your email that will help you get to know this individual, but avoid stereotypical questions that resemble something a spam bot would ask. Do your research before you send out any email, especially if the email is going to an existing client. Make sure that you address it to the right person.

Tyler Stuckey, Copywriter & Media Planner, Ainsley Shea

Our company has a regimented protocol when it comes to email subject lines. The format is always client followed by deliverable or subject followed by version of the document. Additionally, if the document attached to the email is in need of copy-editing or proofing, that is included as well. It ends up looking something like this:

Email Subject Line:

Client_Memorandum_V1_needs proof

This not only leaves zero room for confusion, but also makes it a breeze to find certain emails in your inbox.

Joshua Feinberg, Vice President & Co-Founder, SP Home Run

Do not email strangers that aren’t expecting to hear from you. There’s a four-letter word (spam) that will lump you and your company’s email reputation in with the bad guys. Also, do not make the all-too-common mistake of assuming that your LinkedIn connections have given you permission to import their email information into your email service provider (ESP) or marketing automation platform for mass emailing.

Diane Elizabeth, Founder, Skincare Ox

Shooting off hundreds of emails may seem like the best way to quickly engage potential leads, but sometimes a personal touch works better. First of all, business leaders are becoming savvier and it’s easy to spot a mass email campaign from a mile away.

Even the best campaigns lack authenticity. Instead, find your best prospects, study their business and needs, and send a personal email from one human to another. It does require extra time and attention, but you will reap higher conversion rates and stronger networking relationships as a result.

Monica Friel, Chief Executive Organizer, Chaos to Order

My favorite email etiquette tip is to be very judicious when hitting “Reply All”. In business, it is common practice to copy all and reply all on every email thus cluttering up everyone’s inbox. Be selective about what you send and say so as to not waste time and productivity.

Kristine Neil, Owner, Markon Brands

Learn CC and BCC and Use Responsibly: It’s always a bit of a rub when you take the time to CC someone and then the recipient of the email only responds to the original sender, again and again. CC is about keeping someone in the know, it’s like a primitive push notification to let you know that people are doing something you should know about. Unless it’s clear you can continue without that person, keep the CC going. Similarly, BCC is a useful tool when emailing people whose email you want to keep confidential. This is great for emailing a list of people. It’s great…except for when it’s not used and then you and twenty-seven people you don’t know, have an email with each other’s names all over it.

Paige NeJame, Franchise Owner, CertaPro Painters of the South Shore and Boston

It’s always important to look professional, but in the contracting business, a very professional demeanor in email stands out from the contractors that still write their quotes on the back of a piece of binder paper. Email is like a social event – it is better to be too formal than underdressed. This means using capitalization, punctuation, and good grammar (I can’t tell you how many “i” I get even in cover letters!). Remember, if you were truly friends with the recipient, you’d most likely not be using email to correspond with them in the first place.

Mel LLeras, Owner/Structural Designer, HoneyLove Architecture & Gardening

One of my top rules: Never insult anybody in an email. Not competitors, not vendors that didn’t live up to your expectations, and certainly not the recipient of the email.