Secrets of business email correspondence. Useful phrases for business correspondence Copy. Hidden copy

Business communication is its own world with its own laws. A lot depends on how we comply with these laws: the impression we make on colleagues and partners, work productivity, and even career advancement.

Special place in business communication occupies business correspondence, which is the daily duty of most office workers and not only. The ability to properly conduct business correspondence can be a good help for making profitable deals and building your business image.

Let's look at some of the features of a business letter. So, business correspondence is:

use of formulaic phrases and clichés
emotional neutrality,
semantic accuracy and conciseness of presentation,
well-structured argument.

business correspondence on English language is the same set of rules and clichés, some of which we recommend for everyone who works with foreign partners or in international companies. We bring to your attention some useful phrases that will decorate your business correspondence. These phrases will emphasize your professionalism and help shape the image of a business person. Start? m!

1.Please find attached

Let's start with the classics. Often you have to attach various documents or other files to the letter. In order to notify the recipient about the presence of an attachment, this phrase is perfect. After all, the word “Attachment” in translation means “investment”. The phrase should be used at the end of the letter.

Here are a couple of usage examples:

Please find attached my portfolio.
Please find attached copy of the agreement/contract.

2.I have forwarded

This phrase can be used if you need to forward the email to other recipients. To notify the addressee about this, the phrase “I have forwarded” is perfect. For example:

I have forwarded Anna's CV to you.
I have forwarded John's email to you.

3.I've cc'ed

A person uninitiated in all the secrets of the peculiarities of business correspondence may not understand what this strange abbreviation means. But we are professionals. "I've cc'ed" is an abbreviation that stands for I have carbon copied. The phrase means "put someone on a copy to receive letters."

So if you need to let someone know that you put other recipients in a copy, feel free to use this phrase. For example:

I've cc'ed Sara on this email.
I've cc'ed Jack and Jimmy on these emails.

As for abbreviations that cannot be used in business correspondence, an exception is usually made for this case.

4.For further details

This phrase is a proven way to politely end your letter in English. "For further details", means "for more detailed information", "in more detail". Examples of using:

For further details contact me any time.
For further details write to our Sales-manager.

Another phrase to help you finish politely is "If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me." In translation, this means "If you have any questions, feel free to write to me."

5.I look forward to

The phrase "look forward" means "to look forward to". So if you are looking forward to a response or some other action from the addressee, then it would be quite appropriate to use this phrase. For example:

I look forward to your answer.
I'm looking forward to your reply.

The phrase is best used at the end of the letter.

When writing a letter, you need to be polite even when you don’t really feel like it. The ability to compose competent letters in any situation reflects your professionalism, good breeding and knowledge business ethics. In conclusion, we recall that in business correspondence you must show the accuracy of the wording and impeccable literacy. It is also unacceptable to use abbreviations (with rare exceptions).

Write emails in English correctly, dear friends! Good luck!

What is email? In today's business world, this is:

Your face. It is with the help of email that you can create a positive image in the eyes of the counterparty or spoil the first impression.
Your work tool. A lot of communication with the outside world happens by email. Therefore, having a good command of this tool, you can make your life much easier.
Powerful distraction. The outside world is trying to get you, distract you and lead you astray through email.

From these positions and look at working with e-mail. Let's start simple.

Letter design

I use the Mozilla Thunderbird mail client, so I will use its example. Let's create a new letter and go from top to bottom through the list of fields.

To whom. Copy. Hidden copy

Perhaps someone does not know, but "To" in Mozilla can be changed to "Cc" or "Bcc".

To whom: we write the main recipient or several recipients separated by a semicolon.
Copy: we write someone who should read the letter, but from whom we do not expect a reaction.
Hidden copy: we write someone who should read the letter, but should remain unknown to the rest of the recipients of the letter. It is especially appropriate to use for mass mailings of business letters, such as notifications.

Not properly in the mass mailing, specify the recipients through the "Cc" or "To" fields. Several times a year I receive letters that list 50-90 recipients in the "Cc" field. There is a breach of privacy. Not all of your recipients need to know who else you are working with on a similar topic. It's good if they are people who know each other. And if there are competing companies on the list that do not know about each other? At a minimum, you need to be prepared for unnecessary explanations, and at the very least, to terminate cooperation with one of them. Do not do it this way.

Letter subject

Professional mailing services often write about the importance of the subject line (sometimes sensibly) in their corporate blogs. But there most often we are talking about sales letters, where the subject of the letter solves the problem “email should be opened”.

We discuss daily business correspondence. Here the theme solves the problem "the letter and its author should be easily identified and then found." Moreover, your diligence will return to you in the form of the karma of numerous response letters, only with prefixes Re: or fwd, among which you will have to search for the desired letter on the topic.

Twenty letters is the volume of a one-day correspondence of a middle manager. I don’t talk about entrepreneurs and business owners at all, their number of letters sometimes exceeds 200 or more per day. So once again: do not send emails with an empty subject line.

So, how to correctly formulate the subject of the letter?

Mistake #1 : only the name of the company in the subject. For example, "Sky" and all. Firstly, you are probably not one of your company communicating with this counterparty. Secondly, such a topic does not bring any sense, because the name of your company is already visible from the address. Thirdly, guess what your own mailbox will look like with this approach to correspondence? Approximately like this.

Is it convenient to search on such topics?

Mistake #2 : flashy, selling title. It's great if you know how to write such headlines. But is it appropriate to use these skills in business correspondence? Remember the purpose of the subject line of a business letter: not to sell, but to provide identification and search.

Text of the letter

There are many guides to writing texts for different occasions. For example, Maxim Ilyakhov, Alexander Amzin and other masters of the word have a lot of useful information. I advise you to read their articles at least to improve general literacy and improve the overall style of written speech.

In the process of writing a letter, we must consistently make several decisions.

A matter of courtesy . At the beginning of the letter, you can blur in courtesies or even tenderness in the spirit of “My dear Rodya, for more than two months now I have not spoken to you in writing, from which I myself suffered and even did not sleep another night, thinking.” Very polite and very costly, both in terms of time to compose such an introduction, and in terms of the interlocutor's time to read it. Correspondence is business, remember? Not writing an epistolary genre for a competition and not a letter from his mother to Raskolnikov, but business correspondence.

We respect our time and the recipient!

Introducing yourself and recalling the circumstances of your acquaintance makes sense only in the first letter sent after a fleeting meeting at the exhibition. If this is a continuation of cooperation or current correspondence, in the first letter of the day we write: “Hello, Ivan”, in the second and subsequent ones: “Ivan, ...”.

Appeal . I was always worried about the question of who to contact in a letter if there are several recipients. I recently wrote a letter addressed to three girls named Anna. Without any hesitation, I wrote "Hello, Anna" and did not take a steam bath. But that's not always the case.

What if there are three or even seven recipients and they do not have the same name? You can list by name: "Good afternoon, Rodion, Pulcheria, Avdotya and Pyotr Petrovich." But it's long and takes time. You can write: "Hello, colleagues!".

For myself, I use the rule to address by name the one who is in the "To" field. And to those who are in the copy, do not contact at all. This rule at the same time allows you to more accurately determine (one!) The addressee of the letter and the purpose of this letter.

Citation . Correspondence is often a chain of letters with questions and answers - in a word, a dialogue. It is considered good practice not to delete the history of correspondence and write your answer at the top of the quoted text, so that when you return to this correspondence in a week, you can easily read the dialogue from top to bottom by descending dates.

For some reason, the default setting in Mozilla is "Set cursor after quoted text." I recommend changing it in the menu "Tools" → "Account Options" → "Compilation and Addressing". It must be so.

Purpose of the letter . Business letters are of two types:

when we simply inform the interlocutor (for example, a report on the work done for the month);
and when we want something from the interlocutor. For example, so that he agrees on the attached invoice for payment.

As a rule, there are many more incentive letters than reporting ones. If we want to achieve something from the interlocutor, it is very important to say this in a letter in plain text. The call to action should be followed by a first name and be the last sentence of the letter.

Not properly : "Porfiry Petrovich, I know who killed the old woman."

Correctly : "Porfiry Petrovich, it was I who killed the old woman, please take action on my arrest, I'm tired of suffering!"

Why should the correspondent think for you what to do with this letter? After all, he can make the wrong decision.

Signature in the text . She must be. Moreover, all email clients allow you to set up auto-substitution of a signature, for example, the classic "Respectfully, ...". In Mozilla, this is done in the menu "Tools" → "Account Options".

To write or not to write contacts in the signature is a personal matter for everyone. But if you are somehow connected with sales - be sure to write. Even if the transaction does not take place based on the results of communication, in the future you will be easily found using the contacts from the signature.

Finally, one more feature of the body of the letter for those interlocutors who do not like (cannot, do not want, do not have time) to answer your letters. Specify the default in the text of the letter. For example, “Porfiry Petrovich, if you don’t come to arrest me before 12:00 Friday, then I consider myself amnestied.” Of course, the deadline must be real (do not send the text from the example on Friday at 11:50). The recipient must be physically able to read and decide on your letter. Such a "silence" relieves you of responsibility for the non-response of the interlocutor. As always, the use of this chip must be approached wisely. If a person responds to your letters on time and regularly, such an ultimatum may, if not offend him, then strain him a little or lead to a decision not to answer the letter right now, but to make you wait for Friday.

Attachments

Letters often come with attachments: resumes, commercial offers, estimates, schedules, scans of documents - a very convenient tool and at the same time a source of popular errors.

Error : Huge investment size. We often receive emails with attachments up to 20 MB in size. As a rule, these are scans of some documents in TIFF format, with a resolution of 600dpi. The correspondent's mail program will almost certainly hang for several minutes in futile attempts to download the preview of this attachment. And God forbid the recipient try to read this letter on a smartphone ...

Personally, I delete such letters immediately. Don't want your email to end up in the trash before it's read? Control the size of the attachment. It is recommended that it be no larger than 3 MB.

What if it exceeds?

Try reconfiguring your scanner for a different format and resolution. For example, in PDF and 300dpi quite readable scans are obtained.
Think about programs such as the WinRar archiver or 7zip. Some files compress perfectly.
What if the attachment is huge and you can't compress it? For example, an almost empty accounting database weighs 900 MB. Cloud storages of information will come to the rescue: Dropbox, Google Drive and the like. Some services, like Mail.ru, automatically convert huge attachments into cloud storage links. But I prefer to manage my information stored in the cloud myself, so I do not welcome automation from Mail.ru.

And one more not quite obvious recommendation about investments - their name . It must be understandable and acceptable to the recipient. Once, in the company, we were preparing a commercial offer addressed to ... let it be Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. I received a letter from the manager with the draft CP for approval, and in the attachment there was a file with the name "DlyaFedi.docx". With the manager who sent me this, a dialogue took place with the following content:

Dear manager, are you personally ready to approach this respected person and call him Fyodor to his face?

Somehow no, a respected person, everyone calls him by his first name and patronymic.

Why did you call the attachment “For Fedi”? If I send it to him right now, do you think he will buy axes from us at this CP?

I was going to rename...

Why prepare a time bomb - a potential client's rejection - or create extra work for yourself by renaming a file? Why not immediately name the attachment correctly: "For Fedor Mikhailovich.docx" or even better - "KP_Sky_Axes.docx".

So, with email as a "face" more or less sorted out. Let's move on to e-mail as a productivity tool and talk about its distraction.

Working with letters

Email is a powerful distraction. As with any distraction, mail must be dealt with by tightening rules and implementing work schedules.

At a minimum, you need to turn off ALL mail notifications. If the mail client is configured by default, you will be notified with a sound signal, and the icon next to the clock will blink, and a preview of the letter will be shown. In a word, they will do everything to first tear you away from painstaking work, and then plunge you into the abyss of unread letters and unviewed mailings - minus an hour or two of life.

For some, powerful willpower allows you not to be distracted by notifications, but ordinary people better not to tempt fate and turn them off. In Mozillla Thunderbird, this is done through the menu "Tools" → "Settings" → "General" → "When new messages appear".

If there are no notifications, how to understand that a letter has arrived?

Very simple. You yourself, consciously, allocate time for parsing mail, open your mail client and see all unread messages. This can be done twice a day, for example at lunchtime and in the evening, or during forced downtime, for example, in traffic jams.

People often ask, what about response times and urgent emails? I answer: you do not have urgent letters in the mail. Unless you work in the customer support department (such a department has its own rules for working with mail).

If there are urgent letters, the sender will notify you about this through other channels - phone, SMS, Skype. Then you will consciously go into the mail client and process the urgent mail. All time management gurus (for example, Gleb Arkhangelsky with his "Time Drive") declare the standard for responding to emails up to 24 hours. This is a normal rule of good form - do not expect instant answers from the interlocutor by email. If there is an urgent letter, notify about it through faster communication channels.

So, we turned off notifications and now we turn on the mail client according to our schedule.

What to do when we went to the post office and engaged in an activity called “sorting out email"? Where is the beginning and end of this work?

I have heard a lot about the zero inbox system, but, unfortunately, I have not met a single person who uses it. I had to reinvent my wheel. There are articles on this topic on Lifehacker. For example, " ". Below I will talk about the zero inbox system in my interpretation. I will be grateful if GTD gurus will be noted in the comments, supplement or improve the described system.

It is important to understand and accept that email is not a task planner or an archive for your activities. Therefore, the Inbox folder should always be empty. If you have taken up the analysis of the inbox, do not stop and do not be distracted by anything until you empty this folder.

What to do with emails in inbox? You need to go through each letter sequentially and delete it. Yes, just select and press Delete on the keyboard. If you can't force yourself to delete the email, you'll have to make a decision about what to do with it.

Can you answer it in three minutes? Does it need to be answered? Yes, you do, and the answer will take no more than three minutes, then answer right away.
You need to answer, but preparing the answer will take more than three minutes. If you use a task scheduler that allows you to convert an email into a task, turn your email into a task and forget about it for a while. For example, I use the absolutely wonderful service Doit.im. It allows you to generate a personal email address: you forward a letter to it, and it turns into a task. But if you do not have a task scheduler, move the letter to the "0_Run" subfolder.
After a quick response to a letter, turning it into a task, or just reading it, you need to decide what to do with this message next: delete it or send it to one of the folders for long-term storage.

Here are the folders for long-term storage I have.

0_Run. I don’t have such a folder, but if you don’t have a planner, I repeat, you can add letters here that require detailed study. This folder also needs to be cleaned regularly, but with a thoughtful approach at the time specially allocated for this.
1_Reference Here I put letters with background information: welcome letters with logins from various web services, tickets for upcoming flights, and so on.
2_Projects. Here is stored an archive of correspondence on partners and projects with which there is a current relationship. Naturally, there is a separate folder for each project or partner. In the folder of the partner, I put letters not only from his employees, but also letters from the employees of the "Sky" associated with this partner. Very convenient: if necessary, all correspondence on the project is at hand in a couple of clicks.
3_Museum. Here I throw those letters that are a pity to delete, and the benefits from them are not obvious. Folders with closed projects from "2_Projects" also migrate here. In a word, the first candidates for deletion are stored in the "Museum".
4_Documents. Here are letters with electronic sample documents that may be useful in the future for accounting, for example, reconciliation acts from clients, tickets for trips. The folder has a lot in common with the folders "2_Projects" and "1_Sprav", only it stores accounting information, and in the folder "2_Projects" - management information. In "4_Documents" - dead information, and in "2_Projects" - live.
5_Knowledge. Here I put only really useful mailings, which I want to return to after a while for inspiration or search for solutions.

There are other mail client settings that are important for the operation of this system. First, by default, Thunderbird has the "Mark messages as read" checkbox. I prefer to do it consciously, so the flag is off! To do this, go to the menu "Tools" → "Settings" → "Advanced" → "Reading and display".

Secondly, we use filters . Previously, I actively used filters that automatically forwarded letters to the appropriate folders based on the sender's address. For example, letters from a lawyer were moved to the "Lawyer" folder. I abandoned this approach for several reasons. First: letters from a lawyer in 99% of cases relate to a project or partner, which means they must be moved to the folder of this partner or project. Second: I decided to add awareness. You yourself have to decide where a particular letter should be stored, and it is more convenient to look for unprocessed messages in only one place - in the inbox. Now I use filters only for organizing automatic regular letters from various systems into folders, that is, letters that do not require me to make decisions. Filters in Mozilla Thunderbird are configured in the "Tools" → "Message Filters" menu.

So, with the right approach, e-mail should take from 10 to 60 minutes a day, depending on the volume of correspondence.

Yes, and one more thing. Have you already turned off notifications for new emails? ;)

We send dozens of emails every day. Sometimes these are very short messages, such as: "Let's go to lunch?". Sometimes - with which you present your business or website. When there are a lot of letters and little time, we start to rush and make mistakes. Usually trifling, like a typo, but sometimes there are those that can really hurt your reputation and ruin your relationship with a client or employee.

This can be avoided, you just need to be collected and be aware of some pitfalls. Here are the most common mistakes made when sending emails. Read carefully and remember that you first need to take a short pause, check if everything is in order, and only then click on the "Submit" button.

You are dialing the wrong address

The most common and most annoying mistake. Imagine you want to send some pretty personal photos to a friend or girlfriend, but you automatically type in the address of your boss or customer. And only after the letter is gone, you realize with horror what has just happened. If it's any consolation, each of us has been in this situation at least once in our lives: lawyers sent confidential documents to the opposite side, designers sent site layouts to the wrong client, and so on. But when this happens to us, it seems that the earth is slipping away from under our feet.

Fortunately, in many mail services, for example, in the same Gmail, there is a function. Turn it on and specify a large time interval - so, you know, calmer.

You forgot to invest

You wrote that a file was attached to the letter, but you forgot to attach it. Another common mistake that often leads to misunderstandings and apologies. On the one hand, it's okay, no one is perfect, but it's better to check everything first, and only then send a letter. And to avoid questions from the recipient, we recommend that you list all the attached files right in the body of the letter. For example, like this:

Hey Maxim! I am sending you some files, they are in the attachment:

Service Agreement

GIF with a cat

You don't think about decorating

Meet, as you remember, by clothes. If you don't want your email to make you want to delete it immediately, work on its form. They say that it should be given as much time as the content. Fortunately, today it's easy. For this, we recommend using the Wix ShoutOut app, choosing the appropriate template and adding your text to it. No special knowledge is required, just make sure that everything looks neat and beautiful. By the way, a good mailing list has its own secrets and rules, so we advise you to read our director of email marketing. Don't thank.

You do not include a subject line

The subject of the letter performs approximately the same role as the title of the text. It appears next to your name, the recipient sees it and understands what you sent him: an invoice, the results of a meeting, a job offer, a website layout, etc. Remember that the subject should be clearly formulated so that, if necessary, a person quickly finds your letter, and convincing, so that he is interested, if we are talking about, say, a mailing list. Not so long ago we wrote about if you forgot - it is worth re-reading.

You don't save drafts

If you like writing letters in text editors, then save more often, otherwise it will turn out that you have been sitting on a letter all day, and then suddenly the computer freezes and everything is gone. Or write directly in the mail service - then all your sketches will be automatically saved in the "Drafts" folder.

You are being impolite

Politeness in correspondence is just as important as in life. Here are the basic rules that everyone and everyone must follow:

Always thank the sender for the letter, especially if you see that he did a good job. Remember when we were all taught “magic” words as children? Let's not forget them, despite the fact that we are already adults.

Remain calm, even if the matter is extremely urgent and important. Nervousness and reproaches will definitely not lead to anything good.

Start and end your letter with common phrases. The degree of formality will depend on who you are corresponding with. If this is your boss or just an official, do not use "Hello", "Bye" or "Kiss". And vice versa, if you are writing to a colleague or friend, you can do without the traditional “Respectfully”.

You don't read text

Misprints can spoil the whole impression, so carefully reread the written letter, preferably several times. Doubt about spelling or syntax - go to Diploma.ru. It is better to measure seven times, that is, to check, than later to apologize for typos and prove that you are actually literate.

And by the way: if you are afraid to accidentally send an unfinished letter, first write the entire text in full, and only then type the recipient's address.

You do not put the right people in the copy of the letter

Let's figure out who can even receive your letter. The To field is the primary recipient. The "CC" field is the person who will receive the copy. He does not relate directly to the issue under discussion, but wants or should be aware. The "Bcc" field is the hidden recipients. You add them, but the primary recipient doesn't see them. And here you need to be careful: you can confuse Cc and Bcc, and then the recipient will think that he is being spied on.

Keep in mind that it is important for some people to be aware of what is happening. You do not want to listen to reproaches on the topic “How could you not add me to the copy ?! I worked on this project for two months!” If in doubt, add everyone who has anything to do with the issue. Maybe not everyone will be happy that they are distracted, but there will be no complaints against you.

You don't subscribe

You wrote “Respectfully, Masha” and you think that everything is in order, but the recipient of the letter sits and puzzles over what kind of Masha it is. From a print shop? Or maybe an illustrator? In order not to make him guess - set up a signature, and it will be automatically added to the end of each of your messages. Be sure to include your first name, last name, company name, position, and contact information, such as Skype or phone number. You can add the address - although this is advertising, it is unobtrusive.

You pick the wrong time

Writing letters at night is not the most best idea. The first reason: you are probably terribly tired during the day, you don’t think very well and risk making all these mistakes. The second reason: an avalanche of morning mail will bury your midnight letter under it, and in the near future the addressee will definitely not see it. And the third: apparently, you have nothing else to do, since you are writing business letters at three in the morning.

Our advice: if nothing Important and Urgent happened, send messages from Monday to Friday and on working time like all normal people.

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