Caring communication copy of the letter. Electronic correspondence. Five ways to convince the court to accept it as evidence. To, Cc, Bcc fields

Letters of request are an integral, important and necessary part of business correspondence. On the one hand, these are tactful and diplomatic requests on current issues, on the other hand, they are a tool to achieve certain goals of the addressee. The purpose of any letter of request is to encourage the addressee to certain actions required by the author of the letter. How to write a letter of request in order to get as close as possible to a positive answer?

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

Step 1. Who are you asking?

Address the addressee personally, it is 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 responsibility for its implementation. There are situations when a request is addressed to a team or a 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. Making a compliment to the addressee, you answer his question: “Why are you addressing this question to me?” Note his past accomplishments 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 to resolve the most difficult issues in the field of…”.

This technique will allow the addressee to take a closer look at the request and try to find an opportunity to satisfy it. fuck 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 why you are making this particular request. Enter the addressee in the context of your problem.

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

There are requests different levels complexity, so the addressee is not always interested in fulfilling someone's requests. He needs to be convinced that fulfilling the request carries a potential benefit:

Interest the addressee

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

“At all times, businesslike, enterprising people sought not only to achieve material success, but also to leave their mark on the history of the Motherland, to be remembered for good deeds, to win 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 for your addressee:

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

“There has been an increase in calls to your department on 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 young people, it is difficult to find a more necessary, sacred cause than helping young men and women from dysfunctional families. There are those in our city who already provide such assistance - under the auspices of the mayor's office, our charitable center "Heritage" operates on donations from the townspeople, which teaches difficult teenagers folk crafts ».

Or solve the problem:

“Equipment of specialized places for pastime of children of different ages will help reduce the level of juvenile delinquency and minimize road accidents involving children.”

Describe the significance of the request

When there is nothing to offer the addressee or it is inappropriate in the context of this request, it is better to bring the addressee up to date. Here you need to describe the situation as fully as necessary to understand the relevance of the request and the importance of its implementation. The significance of the request must be described in such a way that it "takes the soul." If the request does not belong to the category of "soulful", then you need to show the addressee the cause-and-effect relationships, which will ensure that the addressee fulfills the request.

“From (date), according to the lease agreement No. X, the rent for 1 m 2 is 20 c.u. 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. per day, which is not enough even to pay rent. If no action is taken, then private entrepreneurs will be forced to close their outlets which could negatively impact your income.

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

Step 4 Statement of 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 it contain ambiguity or understatement. For example, if we are talking about rent reduction, it is important to indicate to what level:

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

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

« To equip a pottery workshop, you need a kiln for firing ceramics - we ask you to help us in acquiring 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 be more specific: "We ask you to help in purchasing a furnace for firing ceramics by transferring 333 thousand USD to the settlement account of the company for the production and installation of furnaces."

Whatever you ask for, the recipient must know exactly when, what, how much and at what price you want to receive. A generalized request is more at risk of rejection 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 existing 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 made bold so that it stands out in the text, but do not abuse this technique.

Step 5. Summarize your request.

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

“If you meet us halfway and reduce the rent for a while until the situation in the region stabilizes, you will not only be able to save more than 150 jobs, but will not suffer global losses due to total 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 help children who find themselves in a difficult situation grow up to be 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 its implementation. The benefit does not have to be material. Remember that the addressee is a person, and feelings are not alien to him.

EXAMPLE:

It was

It became

“We kindly ask you, I.I. Ivanov, arrange a meeting of applicants with the chief 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 Career Guidance Program for Applicants for several years now, helping them to choose a profession.

You, as a personnel manager, are interested in training professionals, and we are ready to help schoolchildren to start preparing masters of their craft. To date, the profession of a manager is one of the most common, but many applicants do not have a clear idea of its meaning.

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

Having told the guys about the secrets of the profession today, you are laying the foundation for training real professionals tomorrow. Perhaps in a few years one of them will take 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 signed by the head or authorized person. If a private person, then it is enough to comply with the basic norms in the arrangement of the elements of the letter. 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 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 like this.

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 for writing texts for different cases life. 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 talked 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 form 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" → "Options account» → «Composition 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."

Right : "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. mail program the correspondent will almost certainly hang for several minutes in futile attempts to download a 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 we were preparing in the company commercial proposal in the name ... 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 - refusal potential client- or create extra work for yourself by renaming the 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 looking at email as a tool. effective work and talk about its distracting component.

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 into the mail and engaged in an 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 who uses it. I had to reinvent my wheel. There are articles on this topic on Lifehacker. For instance, " ". 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 This is where I put letters from 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. Also folders with closed projects from "2_Projects". In a word, the first candidates for deletion are stored in the "Museum".
4_Documents. Here are letters from electronic samples documents that may be useful in the future for accounting, for example, acts of reconciliations from customers, tickets for completed 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, at 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? ;)

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). V Copies recipients can see other people's addresses. In the second case, the identity of additional recipients is hidden.

Adding a recipient address

To specify the recipient(s) of the email, enter their email address in the field To whom (That):

Some email clients allow you to simply enter a username in a field that 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 the full list of other recipients.

How to copy an email

Field CC or Copy used to exchange electronic messages in a more indirect way than the field To whom. If you are in your email are not talking directly to a person, but would like that person to follow the discussion in the email thread or just be aware of this topic, the field Copy would be a great option. Addressee located in Copies letters, receives an unread letter in his mailbox, just like the one who was placed in the box To whom; the difference is only in who you address the letter first in the body of your e-mail. 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 by simply entering a list of addresses in the field Copy, which is usually located immediately 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 Bcc an Email

Every email client (Gmail, Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Yahoo, etc.) allows the sender of an email to reach out to a large number of people without exposing their details 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 private, protect them from spam and spam, or simply don't 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 Parameters to access the setting; v Thunderbird you will need to select this function from the drop-down menu; v gmail you have to press the button Copy and Hidden copy; v Windows Live Mail You will need to simultaneously press the keys alt + B.

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

[Lichtenberg Georg Christoph]

Write letters that 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- it required attribute business communication any company. There are practically no companies that do not use e-mail. But ask yourself the following questions:

Do you ever feel like you're sending an email to a black hole when you send an email to a colleague and you might not get a response?
When employees call each other and ask to read an urgent email, and this happens all day
When you absolutely cannot understand what exactly they want from you in an email
When difficult and difficult questions when discussing e-mail drowning in a sea of information, details, and the issue is still not resolved

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

2. Seven main rules of business correspondence ethics

We conditionally separate the rules of business correspondence on the rules of ethics and rules of communication and information exchange.

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

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

We always start a letter with an appeal
The subject line of the email must be
Check for spelling, punctuation, and speech errors before sending.
The letter must be structured (NO water!)
The letter must contain the correct wording
If we send attachments in a letter, then we will definitely write that there are attached files (this move will help to avoid situations when you send a letter and the file is not attached; the recipient, having read the letter and not finding the attached document, can quickly respond and write to you that the attached documents that you indicated in the letter are missing).
We never delete messages. One of the most important points. The message history should never be deleted, since a letter is a document. If necessary, you should always be able to 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 distinguish letters according to the design structure:

Letter of communication (letter of refusal, letter of claim, letter of recognition, letter of justification, etc.)
Letter of agreement

Letter-communication

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

Letter structure

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

Letter subject

The subject of the letter should contain the specific action that you expect from the respondent: “negotiate a contract”, “propose issues for consideration”, “send a report”, etc.

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

Why is it important to write the right subject line?

By the subject of the letter, it is very easy to find the necessary letter in the daily flow of information. No letter will be lost.

Note: if you send a letter within the company, then the subject of the letter is formatted according to a given standard; if you send a letter outside the company, then it is advisable to format the subject according to the template: Company name: purpose of the letter.

The more constructive in the body of the letter, the better! One of the key skills in business correspondence that you should develop in your employees is the ability to clearly and concisely articulate your thoughts.

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

Corporate Signature

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

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

Sincerely,

Full name, position.

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

The personal signature always refers to the body of the letter. Example: Have a good day/ Thank you / It was a pleasure to talk today / Thank you for taking the time for such an important issue / Greetings to family and children, etc.

To/Cc

We fill in the "To" and "Cc" fields last so as not to accidentally send the letter when it is not yet ready.

What is the difference between the "To" and "Cc" fields?

In the "To" field, we insert the address of the person from whom we want to perform some action.

In the "Copy" field, we insert the address of a person who would benefit from reading the contents of the letter.

P.S. Our experience has proven that the "Copy" field is very useful. If we are negotiating with an ordinary employee, discussing important issues, but we do not receive answers on the merits and on time, then it is worth inserting a letter from the director or a higher manager into a copy, as soon as the correspondence begins constructively.

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 an employee to do his job well, strict control by the management team is necessary.

Also in Outlook there is a function like "Bcc" - an important tool that allows you to inform interested parties about the letter, but at the same time not to embarrass the recipient that the letter is not addressed to him alone!

Letter of agreement

An important type of letter that allows you to sum up the results of the meeting, form agreements in writing, indicate the time for completion and clarify: did both parties understand what they must do correctly?

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

Letter structure:

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

For instance:

Letter design

Font

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

P.S. You should always remember that words written in capital letters are perceived as a rise in tone. They should be avoided.

Paragraph

It is desirable to arrange each separate thought in a separate paragraph so that the text is easier to perceive.

Indentation

Paragraphs should not merge with each other. To make the letter more readable, indentation should be after the salutation, before each paragraph and before the signature:

To make the letter visually more attractive, it is better to format the links in the body of the letter as hyperlinks:

Writing style

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magician_roman in The concept of "hidden copy", learning not to do stupid things

Surprisingly, many people, when they are asked 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 sending letters to a group of clients, you thus show everyone addresses and other recipients, actually revealing your address base.

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

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

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

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

And each recipient will receive a letter where in the "to" field will be only his address . For other programs, if you can't find where to put the Bcc, then ask someone to show you. Another small point, be sure to specify one address in the "to" field, most programs or mail servers will not let you send a letter without this parameter.

And so, when it comes to sending out 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 point with sending a letter to your colleagues, it is recommended 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 hidden copy. If this order is fulfilled, then, for example, an indication of the "who" of your colleague's boss will simply work wonders, and your order will be fulfilled.

A separate issue with suppliers. On the one hand, the indication of all recipients in the copy should show the supplier that you have a choice and he should offer you good prices. On the other hand, the manager who received your letter, seeing that it was sent not only to him, will most likely treat your request as "cool". Personally, in my opinion, I think that in the case of suppliers, you need to use a blind copy, at least for protection trade secret, but more soon for good relations with the supplier manager.

You can read a recent case of a specialist's mistake, when all recipients saw other recipients: Smack everyone in this chat, there were really respectable people there - directors, but still many received spam in response.

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

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