Email strategies for freelancers

Working remote could be a tricky process in the beginning as you won’t have regular face to face interactions with your clients\freelancers. In the internet world, email is the most popular and formal way of communication.

Your client\freelancer cannot see your face to figure out if you said something jokingly or sarcastically or seriously. Just your words can make him understand what you want to convey. You must be exchanging large amount of emails already, but there is always a possibility of misunderstandings if you don’t format your emails well. These are few tips to improve your email communication:

Watch your address:



Email addresses used to be a fun part back in teen years. But not anymore. If your email address is not professional and serious, chances are you won’t be taken seriously. So don’t be cooldude@xyz.com, or pinkqueen@girly.com. Be yourself, be firstname.lastname.xyz@gooddomain.com.

Attachments aren’t always good:


Your client expects you to be intelligent, smart and expert in your domain. Show this in your emails. When attachment is of a considerable size, ask for permission to send in email. Otherwise, share it in dropbox or drive or any other file sharing service. Dropbox and google docs are pretty popular and amazing services to use in these scenarios.

Know the difference between To and CC field:


Any or all email addresses you will put in TO and CC field, will receive your email. So why they are different?

To field contains the email address of the main person(s) who is suppose to take action\reply on your email and Cc contains the email address(es) who is not in question directly but needs to be informed. CCed people can reply or interfere whenever necessary but initial response is expected from TO’ed person.

The subject:


Here it becomes crucial to choose your subject wisely. Subject line is almost sure shot thing to be read by email recipients. But not the entire email. In fact, subject line, most of the times, defines if an email is read worthy or urgent or ignorable. Make it short, concise and relevant. Most importantly, it must give an idea about why you email’ed.

The email:


Your email should be formatted in a professional way. Address, greet and then start the body. Email body is the main part of what you want to convey. Make the body readable by using proper bullet points, numbering, and headings. Make it short and concise but still covering everything.

Review:


Once your email draft is ready, review it. Read it atleast 2 times before sending. It is a tried and tested fact that you will always find mistakes in first read. If you cant find a fault, it is the biggest red flag that something is wrong somewhere. Read it, review it and then send.

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Posted at - Apr 7, 2017 & Last Modified at - Apr 7, 2017