How Email Communication Drives Progress for Businesses

Emails are the central force for communication in the world of business, with this one technology interweaving companies across the globe and facilitating rapid person-to-person dialogue. While executives tend to send many more, the average office worker will send around 40 emails each day.

Beyond just creating an accessible medium and mechanism for communication, emails also become a central force for pushing projects forward in other areas. From reaching new customers and strengthening current relationships to improving internal and external relations, email does it all.

In this article, we’ll turn to email communication, demonstrating the different ways that it helps to drive success in the world of business.

Using Email for Customer Service

Email is the preferred medium for customers to reach out for support with a service or product. Keeping an open channel for customer service via email will be incredibly effective for your business, as it will help to keep your customers happier with your offerings. While acquiring new customers can be a costly endeavor, keeping them can lead to high returns. Over time, sustained loyalty to a company will convert into higher revenues for the company itself.

In order to boost customer satisfaction as much as possible, your business should turn to email for customer service. Once a request for help comes in, make sure that a support agent replies to this initial email within 24 hours, and less if possible. A quick response rate will demonstrate to the customer that you prioritize their concerns, and a timely solution will create a positive association between the customer and your brand.

As email is a direct form of communication, one that arrives immediately in a user’s inbox, it is enormously effective in support situations. By leveraging email communication for customer service, you’ll boost satisfaction rates and convert your customers into repeat clients.

Using Email To Capture New Leads

Beyond using emails to communicate with current customers, email can also be a powerful medium for getting in contact with new leads and securing new customers. Email marketing is a well-known and effective form of getting in contact with new customers, and one that affords itself to a high degree of personalization.

By using personalized email marketing, you’re able to reach out to new user groups and discuss potential advantages you would have for them. Depending on your business, the style and content of these emails will vary greatly. However, the common through-line in these new lead emails is that you’re demonstrating the effectiveness of your product or services for that particular customer.

Equally, you’re able to nurture potential leads via email, leveraging the open channel to deliver personalized messages directly to the inboxes of your new clients. As email is a highly traceable format, you’re also able to integrate tracking and performance markers into these emails. When managing your marketing department, you’ll be able to see their success rates with email marketing, and allow them the insight they need to analyze email open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.

Over time, you can nurture your outgoing email streams into a powerful system for acquiring new leads.

Using Email For Internal Communication

Typically, while email is an effective tool for internal communication, this is actually one of the areas that it sees the least usage. Most companies will have several different internal communication systems, like an instant messaging tool alongside their email. For employees that are in the same team or department, an instant messaging system will be more effective for day-to-day communication.

Email comes in handy when your business is focusing on cross-departmental communication. If one team member needs to get in contact with someone that they don’t have much reason to talk to on a regular basis, then email provides a level of formality that is expected in the world of business.

Similarly, when reaching out for important internal conversations, like those with a manager or with an HR representative, it’s always a good idea to do so over email. With email, you’ll have a permanent record of the conversations that you have had, helping to create a paper trail for the future.

Best Practices To Boost the Effectiveness of Your Emails

In order to facilitate better email communication, you should always endeavor to follow the best practices set out. What’s more, your company may have style guides when it comes to external email communication, which you can also take into mind.

Here are a few of the most important practices you can follow to boost the effectiveness of your emails:

• Keep Emails Short – Considering the fact that people receive well over 100 emails per day, it’s always best to keep your emails short and sweet. While pleasantries are appreciated, don’t waste too much space before getting to the purpose of your email. People will appreciate you getting to the core of why you’re sending the email as soon as possible.
• Use Email Signatures – Email signatures are an additional space that you can attach to all of your outbound communications which will give more information to the recipient. By using templates for email signatures, you’ll be able to rapidly craft a unique email style for your company and make sure you’re sending out cohesive email communications to all.
• Implement Outbound Links – Another impactful way of getting more from your emails is to include outbound links, either in the text of your email or within your email signature. These outbound links will allow you to share more information with the recipient, allowing you to hone the purpose of that email to a greater extent.

Although not an exhaustive list, these core ideas will give you the gist of how you can maximize the returns from every email you send. Luckily, many of these best practices simply focus on streamlining your messages, packing more into a smaller space. With that in mind, you’ll be able to continuously craft better emails and increase their positive reception.

Final Thoughts

Communicating via email is one of the most effective ways of doing business. Whether you’re contacting a new lead, discussing with coworkers, or simply creating a paper trail of ideas and specific dates to look back on, email really can do it all.

By understanding the different ways that you can use email communication, you’re able to streamline all outgoing communications and drive progress for your business. Over time, email will convert into the central force for connection, expansion, and refinement within your business. That is, if you foster it as a strong communication front and allow email to become the effective tool it can be.