Take care of the link copy of the letter Electronic correspondence. Five ways to convince the court to accept it as evidence. "To", "Cc", "Bcc" fields

Request letters are an integral, important and necessary part of business correspondence. On the one hand, these are tactful and diplomatic inquiries on current issues, on the other hand, they are a tool for achieving certain goals of the addressee. The purpose of any letter of request is to induce the addressee to certain actionsrequired by the letter author. How do you write a letter of request to get as close to a positive response as possible?

Any letter of request should consist of a well thought out rationale and a clear statement of the request. In addition, you can use techniques that increase the effectiveness of the letter.

Step 1. To whom do you apply with the request?

Contact the addressee personally, better - by name and patronymic:

"Dear Ivan Ivanovich!", "Dear Mr. Ivanov!"

Firstly, you express your respect to the addressee, and secondly, a request addressed to a specific person imposes on him the responsibility for its implementation. There are situations when a request is addressed to a team or group of people. In this case, it is also desirable to personalize the appeal as much as possible:

« dear Colleagues! "," Dear managers! "," Dear junior employees! "," Dear employees personnel service!»

Step 2. Why are you contacting me?

Compliment the recipient. When you compliment the addressee, you answer his question: "Why are you addressing this question to me?" Recognize his past achievements or personal qualities.

“You are always ready to listen and find the best way to solve the problem of almost everyone who turned to you. And, I must give you credit, you helped a lot. "

"You are the leading expert in the field ...".

"You have helped many people to resolve the most difficult issues in the field ...".

This technique will allow the addressee to take a closer look at the request and try to find an opportunity to satisfy be her.

A compliment is appropriate when it comes to non-standard requests, when you need to win over the addressee, when you need to pay attention to certain merits and qualities that are necessary and important to fulfill your request.

It is very important not to cross the line between a compliment and rude flattery. Be sincere.

Step 3. Justification of the request

Any request must be justified as to why you are making this particular request. Put the addressee in the context of your problem.

At this stage, you need to choose the three most weighty arguments for the addressee. It is best to arrange the arguments according to the scheme: strong - medium - strongest.

Requests are of different difficulty levels, so the addressee is not always interested in fulfilling someone's requests. He needs to be convinced that fulfilling the request has potential benefits:

Get the addressee interested

Offer to realize some attractive opportunity for him related to the fulfillment of your request:

"At all times, businesslike, enterprising people have sought not only to achieve material success, but also to leave their mark in the history of the Motherland, be remembered for good deeds, and gain respect."

« The successful activity of any professional community is, first of all, understanding and support from friendly Unions, participation in joint activities and projects».

« Of course, your big goal is a clean and comfortable city for people.».

Or, voice a problem that is very relevant to your addressee:

“You, as a wise master of the city, are probably worried about the disorderly walks of children different ages in unsuitable places for this, which leads to more frequent accidents and an increase in child crime. "

"Your department has received more frequent requests for non-core issues, which takes up a lot of invaluable working time."

Show how your request can help realize the opportunity:

« And today, when our country relies on youth, it is difficult to find a more necessary, holy cause than helping young men and women from disadvantaged families. There are those in our city who are already providing such assistance - under the auspices of the mayor's office, our Heritage charity center operates on donations from the townspeople, which teaches difficult teenagers folk crafts ».

Or to solve the problem:

"Equipping specialized places for the pastime of children of different ages will help reduce the level of child crime and minimize accidents involving children."

Describe the significance of the request

When there is nothing to offer to the addressee or in the context of the given request it is inappropriate, then it is better to bring the addressee up to date. Here you need to describe the situation as fully as it is necessary to understand the relevance of the request and the importance of fulfilling it. The significance of the request must be described in such a way as to “take it for the soul”. If the request does not belong to the category of "sentimental", then you need to show the addressee the causal relationship, which will allow the addressee to fulfill the request.

“From (date), according to the lease agreement No. X, the rent for 1 m 2 is $ 20. in a day. Over the past three months, there has been a decline in trading activity due to economic instability and social unrest. The average profit from trading is $ 10. a day, which is not enough even to pay the rent. If measures are not taken, then private entrepreneurs will be forced to close their outletswhich can negatively affect your income. "

Thus, you must make it clear to the addressee that the fulfillment of the request carries the prospect of receiving material or non-material benefits.

Step 4. Statement of the request

When the addressee is prepared, you can state the actual request. The text of the request should be sufficiently concise and extremely clear. In no case should there be ambiguity or understatement in it. For example, if we are talking about reducing rent, then it is important to indicate to what level:

“We ask you to reduce the level of rent until the situation stabilizes to $ 5. per m2 per day ".

If we are talking about the provision of services, then make the request as specific as possible, indicating the desired dates, price issue, etc.:

« To equip a pottery workshop, you need a ceramic kiln - we ask you to help us in purchasing it. The cost of the furnace with the installation is 998 thousand rubles.».

In this example, it is not entirely clear what kind of assistance is required from the addressee. Better to ask you to be more specific: “We ask you to help us in purchasing a kiln for firing ceramics by transferring $ 333 thousand to the account of the company for the production and installation of kilns”.

Whatever you ask for, the addressee must know exactly when, what, how much and at what price you want to receive. A generalized request is more at risk of being denied because the addressee does not always have the time and desire to deal with the details. In addition, you run the risk of not getting what you want by transferring the initiative to the addressee.

For example, private entrepreneurs wrote a letter asking for a rent reduction, but did not indicate to what level they want to reduce the rent:

"We ask you to reduce the level of rent until the situation stabilizes."

As a result, they received a reduction in rent, but insignificant (by 1% of the available one). Thus, their request was granted, but little changed in the position of the initiators of the letter.

In some cases, the text of the request can be highlighted in bold to make it stand out in the text, but do not overuse this technique.

Step 5. Summarize your request.

Repeat your request and emphasize how the addressee will benefit if the request is fulfilled. The request should be slightly modified. The best way is to build a sentence according to the scheme: "If you fulfill the request, you will be happy."

“If you meet us halfway and reduce the rent for a while while the situation in the region stabilizes, you will be able not only to save more than 150 jobs, but also not to incur global losses due to complete absence rent ".

But there may be other options:

“You can be sure that every ruble of your charitable donations will go to a good cause and will help children in a difficult situation to grow into worthy citizens.”

"You can be sure that every child's smile will give you moral satisfaction from your difficult work, and your efforts and efforts are an investment in worthy and happy citizens of the near future."

The main thing is to repeat the meaning of the request and the benefits of fulfilling it. The benefits don't have to be tangible. Remember that the addressee is a person, and feelings are not alien to him.

EXAMPLE:

It was

Has become

“We kindly ask you, II. Ivanov, arrange a meeting of applicants with the general manager of your company. We will be grateful for your assistance.

With respect and gratitude,

Employment Center Director

P.P. Petrov "

“Dear Ivan Ivanovich!

Your company has been participating in the Professional Guidance Program for applicants for several years, helping them to make their choice of a profession.

As a HR manager, you are interested in training professionals, and we are ready to help schoolchildren start preparing masters of their craft. Today the profession of a manager is one of the most widespread, but many applicants do not have a clear idea of \u200b\u200bits meaning.

In this regard, we ask you to organize a meeting of the general manager with applicants on March 23 at 15.00 on the basis of your company.

Having told the guys about the secrets of the profession today, you are laying the foundation for training true professionals tomorrow. Perhaps, in a few years, it is one of them who will bring your company to a new level of development.

With respect and gratitude,

Employment Center Director

P.P. Petrov "

And do not forget about the design of the letter - this is the "face" of the organization. If the initiator of the letter of request is an organization, then such a letter is drawn up on letterhead with the signature of the head or an authorized person. If a private person, then it is enough to comply with the basic rules in the arrangement of letter elements. These details are legally and psychologically very important for the addressee and the formation of the correct image of the sender.

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What is email? In the modern business world, these are:

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

From this perspective, let's look at working with e-mail. Let's start simple.

Letter design

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

To whom. Copy. Hidden copy

Someone might not know, but Mozilla's "To" can be changed to "Cc" or "Bcc".

To whom: we write the main addressee or several addressees separated by semicolons.
Copy: we write to someone who should read the letter, but from whom we do not expect a response.
Hidden copy: we write to the one who should familiarize himself with the letter, but should remain unknown to the rest of the recipients of the letter. Especially suitable for mass mailing of business letters, such as notifications.

Wrong in mass mailing, specify recipients through the "Cc" or "To" fields. Several times a year, I receive letters in which 50–90 addressees are listed in the “Cc” field. There is a violation of privacy. Not all of your recipients need to know who else you are working with on a similar topic. It's good if these are people you know each other. What if the list includes competing companies that do not know about each other? At the very least, you need to be ready for unnecessary explanations, at the maximum, for the termination of cooperation with one of them. Do not do like this.

Letter subject

The importance of the subject line is often written (sometimes sensibly) in their corporate blogs by professional mailing services. But there most often we are talking about sales letters, where the subject line solves the problem "email should be opened".

We are discussing 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 karma of numerous response letters, only with prefixes Re: or Fwd, among which you will have to look for the desired letter on the topic.

Twenty letters is the volume of a one-day correspondence of a middle manager. I do not speak about entrepreneurs and business owners at all, their number of letters sometimes goes off scale for 200 or more per day. Therefore, once again: do not send emails with an empty subject.

So how to formulate your subject line correctly?

Mistake # 1 : only the company name in the subject. For example, "Sky" and that's it. First, for sure you are not one of your company communicating with this counterparty. Secondly, such a topic does not bring any meaning, because the name of your company is already visible from the address. Third, guess what your own mailbox will look like with this approach to correspondence? Something like this.

Is it convenient to search for such topics?

Mistake # 2 : a flashy, selling headline. It's great if you know how to write headlines like this. 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 for writing lyrics for different occasions. For example, Maxim Ilyakhov, Alexander Amzin and other masters of the word have a lot of useful things. I advise you to read their articles at least to improve general literacy and improve the general style of writing.

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

A question 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 haven't talked with you in writing, from which I myself suffered and did not even sleep another night thinking." It is very polite and very costly, both in terms of time for composing such an introduction, and for the time of the interlocutor to read it. This is a business correspondence, remember? Not an essay of the epistolary genre for the competition and not a letter to Raskolnikov's mother, but business correspondence.

We respect our time and the recipient's!

It makes sense to introduce yourself and remind the circumstances of acquaintance 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 who to contact in a letter, if there are several recipients. I recently wrote a letter to three girls named Anna. Without any doubts, I wrote "Hello, Anna" and did not bathe. But this is not always the case.

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

For myself, I use the rule to refer by name to the one who is in the "To" field. And to those who are in the copy, do not apply 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 ... Often, correspondence is a chain of letters with questions and answers - in a word, a dialogue. It is considered good form not to delete the history of the correspondence and write your answer at the top of the quoted text, so that, returning to this correspondence a week later, you can easily read the dialogue from top to bottom in descending dates.

For some reason, the default setting in Mozilla is "Place cursor after quoted text". I recommend changing it in the menu "Tools" → "Options account"→" Compilation and Addressing ". It should be like this.

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

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

As a rule, there are many more prompting 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 accompanied by an address by name and followed by the last sentence in the letter.

Wrong : "Porfiry Petrovich, I know who killed the old woman."

Right : "Porfiry Petrovich, it was me who hacked the old woman, please take measures to arrest me, 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 mail clients allow you to configure auto-substitution of a signature, for example, the classic "Regards, ...". In Mozilla, this is done under Tools → Account Settings.

To write or not to write contacts in the signature is everyone's personal business. But if you are in any way connected with sales - be sure to write. Even if the deal does not take place based on the results of communication, in the future you will be easily found by 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, does not have time) to answer your letters. Enter the default in the text of the letter. For example, "Porfiry Petrovich, if you don't come to arrest me before 12:00 on Friday, then I consider myself amnestied." Of course, the deadline must be real (you shouldn't send the text from the example on Friday at 11:50). The recipient must be physically able to read and decide on your letter. This "silence" relieves you of responsibility for the failure of the interlocutor. As always, the use of this feature must be approached wisely. If a person responds to your letters on time and regularly, such an ultimatum can, if not offend him, then strain him a little or lead to a decision not to reply to the letter right now, but make you wait for Friday.

Investments

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.

Mistake : huge attachment size. Emails with attachments up to 20 MB are often received. 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 freeze for several minutes in vain attempts to download a preview of this attachment. And God forbid the recipient to try to read this letter on a smartphone ...

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

What if it exceeds?

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

And one more not entirely obvious recommendation about investments - their name ... It must be understandable and acceptable to the recipient. Once in a company we were preparing commercial proposal in the name ... let it be Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. I received a letter from the manager with a project proposal for approval, and the attachment included a file named "ForFedi.docx". With the manager who sent me this, a dialogue took place something like this:

Dear manager, are you personally ready to approach this to a respected person and name him in the face of Fedya?

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

Why did you call the attachment "ForFedi"? If I send him right now, do you think he will buy axes from us for this CP?

I was going to rename later ...

Why prepare a time bomb - a prospect's rejection - or do yourself the extra work of renaming a file? Why not immediately name the attachment correctly: "For Fedor Mikhailovich.docx" or even better - "KP_Nebo_Topory.docx".

So, we have more or less sorted out with email as a "face". Let's move on to looking at email as a tool effective work and let's talk about its distraction.

Working with letters

Email is a powerful distraction. As with any distraction, mail needs to be dealt with by tightening rules and implementing a work schedule.

At a minimum, you need to disable ALL notifications about the arrival of mail. 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 unseen mailings - minus an hour or two from life.

Someone has powerful willpower that allows them 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" → "Options" → "General" → "When new messages appear."

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

Very simple. You yourself, consciously, set aside 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.

Often asked, what about reaction times and urgent emails? The answer is: you have no 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 via other channels - phone, SMS, Skype. Then you will deliberately go into the mail client and process urgent mail. All time management gurus (for example, Gleb Arkhangelsky with his "Time Drive") declare the standard for responding to email up to 24 hours. This is a normal rule of good form - do not expect instant replies from the interlocutor by email. If there is an urgent letter, notify about it via faster communication channels.

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

So what should we do when we went to the mailbox and started the activity called “parsing 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 using 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 would be grateful if GTD gurus would check in the comments, add or improve the described system.

It is important to understand and accept that email is not a task scheduler or archive for your activities. Therefore, the Inbox folder should always be empty. Once you've started parsing your inbox, don't stop or get distracted by anything until you empty this folder.

What to do with letters in the inbox? You need to go through each letter sequentially and delete it. Yes, just select and press Delete on your keyboard. If you can’t get yourself to delete the letter, you have to decide what to do with it.

Can you answer it in three minutes? Do I need to answer it? Yes, it’s necessary, and the answer will take no more than three minutes, then answer immediately.
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 a letter to a task, turn the email into a task and forget about it for a while. For example, I use the absolutely wonderful Doit.im service. 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_Follow" subfolder.
After a quick response to a letter, turning it into a task or a simple familiarization, 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.

These are the folders for long-term storage that I have.

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

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

Second, we use filters ... Previously, I actively applied filters that automatically forwarded letters to the appropriate folders at the sender address. For example, letters from a lawyer were moved to the “Lawyer” folder. Refused this approach for several reasons. First: letters from a lawyer in 99% of cases relate to any 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 must decide where a specific letter should be stored, and it is more convenient to search for unprocessed messages in only one place - in the inbox. Now I use filters only for categorizing automatic regular letters from different 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. You have already turned off notifications about the arrival of new letters? ;)

Most email clients, including Gmail, Mail.ru, Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla thunderbird, allow you to put multiple recipients in Copy(on the english language abbreviation adopted SS), or Bcc (CCB). IN Copies recipients can see other people's addresses. In the second case, the identity of the additional recipients is hidden.

Add recipient address

To specify the recipient (or recipients) of an email, enter its email address in the field To whom (Then):

Some email clients allow you to simply enter a username in a field, which is then automatically populated by the program.

If you use this field to send email to multiple people, each of them will be able to see a complete list of other recipients.

How to create a copy of an email

Field CC or Copy used for electronic messaging in a more indirect way than the field To whom... If you are in your e-mail do not contact the person directly, but would like this person to follow the discussion in a thread of letters or just be aware of this topic, the field Copywould be a great option. Destination that is in Copies letters, receives an unread letter in his inbox, like the one who was placed in the field To whom; the only difference is to whom you first address the letter in the body of your email. In the professional world, mailing to Copies is used very widely and serves to keep colleagues informed about different events and topics.

You can list email recipients simply by entering a list of addresses in the field Copywhich is usually just below the field To whom... Everyone in this chain of recipients will be able to see the names and email addresses of all other recipients:

How to create a blind copy of an email

Each email client (Gmail, Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Yahoo, etc.) enables the sender of the letter to reach out to a large number of people without revealing their information to other users in the email chain. This function is called BCC or Hidden copy... You can hide recipients by entering their addresses in the field Hidden copy instead of using fields To whom and Copy:

You can use this feature for both individual and group emails. This is especially useful if you want to keep your contacts confidential, protect them from spam and unwanted emails, or simply if you do not want your recipients to know who received the same message.

Field Hidden copy not always available by default for all email clients. For example, in Outlook You will need to go to Parametersto access the setting; in Thunderbird you will need to select this function from the drop-down menu; in Gmail need to press a button Copy and Hidden copy; in Windows Live Mail You will need to press the keys at the same time Alt + B.

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The letters of an intelligent person reflect the nature of those to whom they are addressed.

[Lichtenberg Georg Christoph]

Write the letters you would like to receive.

[Antique aphorism]

Writing is a powerful argument in the business world.

[Bekhtereva Victoria]

1. Why have uniform corporate standards in business correspondence?

Email is a required attribute business communication any company. There are hardly any companies that don't use email. But ask yourself the following questions:

Do you ever have the feeling that when you send an email to a colleague, you get the feeling that you are sending an email to a black hole, and you may simply not be answered
When employees call each other and ask to urgently read an email, and this happens all day
When you absolutely cannot understand what exactly they want from you in an email
When complex and difficult questions when discussing on e-mail drowning in a sea of \u200b\u200binformation, details, and the question is still not solved

If these issues are relevant to you, then you can gain a lot of time every day by introducing uniform rules of electronic correspondence. In this article we will talk about the etiquette of business correspondence.

2. Seven Main Rules of Business Correspondence Ethics

Let's conditionally divide the rules of business correspondence on the rules of ethicsand rules of communication and exchange of information.

Communication rules are governed by information exchange rules within business processes and projects. We will devote a separate article to them. The rules of ethics form the style of internal relations of the company's employees and inevitably influence the formation of the image of your company among partners. For example, recently from one of our partners, I received a letter beginning with the words, "Good afternoon, Bekhterev." How do you think, did we succeed in cooperation?

In order not to “lose face” of the company while conducting business correspondence, it is necessary to observe the “golden rules” of business correspondence ethics:

We always start a letter with an appeal
The subject of the letter must be required
Before sending, it is necessary to check spelling, punctuation, speech errors
The letter should be structured (NO water!)
The letter must contain correct wording
If we send attachments in a letter, then be sure to write that there are attached files (such a move will help to avoid situations when you send a letter, but the file is not attached; the recipient, having read the letter and not finding the attached document, can promptly respond and write to you that the attached the documents that you indicated in the letter are missing).
We never delete a conversation. One of the most important points. The message history should never be deleted, since a letter is a document. If necessary, you must be able to always raise the history of correspondence. Radislav Gandapas, for example, even included a request not to delete the history of correspondence in his signature.

3. Types of letters

There are many different classifications, we propose to differentiate letters according to the design structure:

Letter of communication (letter of denial, letter of claim, letter of acceptance, letter of justification, etc.)
Letter of agreement

Letter communication

In this type of letter, we include all types of letters that an employee uses in the course of his professional activity.

Structure of the letter

The letter should not be in single text. It should be clearly structured and well-written so that the recipient does not lose sight of important information. The structure of the letter consists of clear components:

Letter subject

The subject line of the letter should contain a specific action that you expect from the respondent: "agree on a contract", "suggest questions for consideration", "send a report", etc.

If you are sending documents, then the subject should have a clear wording of the documents that are contained in the attachment of the letter.

Why is it important to have the correct subject line?

On the subject of the letter, it is very easy to find the necessary letter in the daily flow of information. Not a single letter will be lost.

Note: if you are sending a letter within the company, then the subject line of the letter is drawn up according to a given standard, if you are sending a letter outside the company, then it is advisable to issue the subject according to the template: Company name: the purpose of the letter.

The more constructive in the body of the letter, the better! One of the key skills in the ability to conduct business correspondence that you must develop among employees is the ability to clearly and concisely formulate your idea.

P.S. If, when composing a letter, we mention a fact from the interlocutor's letter, it must be quoted, separating it in color or font.

Corporate signature

The corporate signature design template must be the same for all company employees.

The signature must contain all the key details of the addressee, so that, if necessary, the recipient of the letter could easily contact you.

Respectfully,

Full name, position.

P.S. If we want a warm relationship with a partner / client, then it is worth issuing a personal signature. Anyone is pleased to receive a letter with a personal attitude, even in formal correspondence.

A personal signature always refers to the body of the letter. Example: Have a nice day / Thank you / I was glad to talk today / Thank you for your time on such an important issue / Hello to family and children, etc.

To / Copy

Fill in the “To” and “Copy” fields in the last turn so as not to accidentally send a letter when it is not yet ready.

How do the "To" and "Cc" fields differ?

In the “To” field, we insert the address of the person who is required to perform an action.

In the field "Cc" we insert the address of a person who would find it useful to familiarize himself with the contents of the letter.

P.S. Our experience has proven that the Cc field is very useful. If we are negotiating with an ordinary employee, discussing important issues, but do not receive substantive answers and on time, then you should insert a copy of the letter of the director or a senior manager, as soon as the correspondence begins on a constructive basis.

Unfortunately, in many companies the level corporate culture not at the proper level, as a result of which there are situations when, in order for the employee to do his job well, tight control by the management team is necessary.

Outlook also has a function like “Bcc” - an important tool that allows you to inform interested parties about a letter, but do not confuse the recipient that the letter is not addressed to him alone!

Letter of agreement

An important type of letter that allows you to summarize the results of the meeting, form agreements in writing, indicate the time of completion and clarify: did both parties correctly understand what they need to accomplish?

It is useful to draw up such letters after a meeting, negotiations and meetings in order to have written agreements and a single vision of their implementation.

Letter structure:

Greetings, appeals and thanks to the participants in the discussion.
Repetition of the purpose of the meeting at which the arrangements were formed.
A listing of all the issues that were discussed in conjunction with the decisions taken on them and the appointment of a person responsible for execution.
Fixing ideas that do not require urgent implementation for history.
Question to the addressees: Is everything taken into account? Are there any comments and additions?

For example:

Letter design

Font

The font of the letter should be uniform, italics can be highlighted in the text key points, headers, but be sure to adhere to a single design style.

P.S. It should always be remembered that words written in capital letters are perceived as raising the tone. They should be avoided.

Paragraph

It is advisable to draw up each separate thought in a separate paragraph to make the text easier to perceive.

Indentation

The paragraphs should not merge with each other. To make the letter more readable, indents should be after the greeting, before each paragraph and before the signature:

To visually look the letter more attractive, it is better to formulate links in the body of the letter in hyperlinks:

Writing style

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magician_roman in the concept of "blind carbon copy", learning not to do stupid things

Surprisingly, many people, when they are required to send a letter to several people at once, simply list the addresses in the "To" field, this is normal when this letter is addressed to your colleagues or friends, but when you send letters to a group of clients, this way you show everyone addresses and other recipients, in fact, revealing their address base.

It is enough for any of the clients to forward this letter to your competitor and your contacts will immediately flow away.

It is strange, but many far from stupid people will be surprised to learn that if you need to send a letter to many recipients so that they do not know about each other, there is a "Bcc" field for this.

For example, for mail.ru it will look like this:

And so again briefly: indicated the addresses in the "to" - everyone can see who you sent the letters to, indicated in the "blind copy" - everyone thinks that the letter is only to him.

And each recipient will receive a letter where in the "to" field there will be only his address ... For other programs, if you cannot find where to specify a blind copy, then ask someone to show you. Another small point, you must specify one address in the "to" field, most programs or mail servers will not let you send an email without this parameter.

And so, when it comes to sending offers, news to a group of your customers - here the practice of using a blind copy is unambiguous, you must hide your address base. An interesting moment with sending a letter to your colleagues, they recommend here to act according to the situation, for example, sending a letter with a request to send suggestions (for example, to improve customer service) and if each colleague sees that other people have received the same letter, then most likely they will not answer - rely on others, so you need to use a blind copy. If this assignment is fulfilled, for example, an indication of the "whom" of your colleague's boss will simply work wonders, and your assignment will be fulfilled.

A separate question with suppliers. On the one hand, indicating all recipients in a copy should show the supplier that you have a choice and should offer you good prices... On the other hand, the manager who received your letter, seeing that it was sent not only to him, is likely to react to your request "cool". Personally, in my opinion, I believe that in the case of suppliers, you need to use a blind carbon copy, at least to protect trade secrets, but rather more for a good relationship with the supplier’s manager.

You can read a recent case of a specialist's error, when all the recipients saw other addressees: Smack everyone in this chat, there really were solid people - the directors, but nevertheless, many received spam in return.

Well, as always, a discussion in the comments is welcome.

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