5 writing tips that will empty your inbox and save you loads of time

Does your email inbox fill up faster than you can empty it? You’re not alone – answering emails can take up way too much of a business owner’s time. As former editor of Flying Solo, Kelly Exeter knows a thing or two about writing great emails that don’t send you back a flood of replies to attend to. Here’s her five top tips to empty your inbox – and keep it that way.

Recently, I sent an email to all our clients (over 1,000 people). It was an update about a change we were making, one that would affect them all. Upon being informed I was about to press ‘send’, my colleagues braced themselves. Their assumption was that their respective inboxes were about to fill up with responses full of questions about the change.

“Ye of little faith,” I thought.

My benchmark for emails of this nature – purely informational and no reply needed – is to get zero responses. The only way to achieve this is to ensure the recipient knows what the change means for them and whether there is anything they must do. I’m proud to report the ‘zero response’ benchmark was achieved for this particular communication.

Now, not all emails are purely informational and require no reply. Sometimes a bit of back and forth is necessary. But, every email in your inbox requires processing power. Every bit of processing you do takes energy. And every bit of back and forth is an extra email in your inbox.

5 writing tips to keep your email inbox under control

My goal is to never have the number of emails in my inbox stretch beyond what I can see on my screen at one time. How do I achieve this? By applying five writing principles that:

1. Minimise the number of emails coming into my inbox
2. Facilitate my ability to remove the emails that are there already

Here are those principles.

1. Take conversations out of the inbox

If there is ‘one rule to rule them all’, this is it – don’t have conversations via email. It is a terrible tool for that, especially conversations involving more than two people.

Use Slack, Teams or messaging apps on your phone when you need to converse with several people at once. Make a phone call when you need to converse with just one other person. You can always use email to summarise any outcomes, agreements, or deliverables. But taking the conversation out of email hugely reduces your inbox load.

2. Anticipate questions and answer them upfront

Proposing a meeting? The recipient of your email wants the date, time and place and maybe even one or two alternatives to choose from. With the place, go so far as to give the exact address so the person doesn’t have to check ‘is this the place you’re talking about?’

Communicating a change? The person receiving the email only cares about two things:

1. What does this mean for me?
2. Do I need to DO anything (and if so, what)?

Sending a quote? Provide a pricing breakdown if possible (rather than just the total price), along with what the next step is if the person wishes to proceed.

While it might feel easier to quickly dash off an email and deal with the questions/clarifications as they come, in the long run you’ll be saving yourself a lot of inbox space and energy if you anticipate questions upfront and answer them before they’re asked.

3. Become a subject line master

Just like a good headline will grab attention, so too will an email subject line that’s clear and easy to process.

Something vague like ‘Let me know thoughts’ could see your email sit in someone’s inbox unopened for days. Something explicit like ‘Response required: Approval for $2,000 spend’ should get the swift response you need to clear things away at your end more quickly.

Also, don’t be afraid the change the subject line if you receive an answer to an old email that’s on a new topic. Or when you need to split one email thread into two because someone is presenting you with two disparate issues in one email.

4. Make desired actions clear

We’ve all experienced the frustration of getting to the end of an email and thinking, ‘I’m not sure what this person wants me to do.’ Because it means either guessing (and dealing with the extra back and forth of guessing wrong) or seeking clarification and waiting for a response before you can do anything.

Since I don’t like to be on the receiving end of these kinds of emails, I try not to send them myself. I know that if I’m clear about the action I’m expecting, the more quickly it can be dealt with.

If I’m sending through a complaint, I specify the resolution or outcome I’m seeking. If there is no way to resolve the situation, I acknowledge ‘I’m not seeking an outcome here, I’m just venting’. (And then I reconsider sending the email because dropping vents in people’s inboxes is sometimes necessary, but mostly not.)

If I require a specific action, I make it clear what that action is. I will often specify: ‘Action required:’ at the end.

If I don’t require any action, I will say ‘No response needed’ or ‘This is purely for your information, I don’t need you to do anything’.

5. Always proofread before sending

We’re all so busy and we all have so many emails to respond to. So it can be tempting to quickly dash off a reply to something and press send without proofing.

But every time I take a minute or two to go over an email before sending, I’m glad I did. I almost always catch an error or phrasing that would cause confusion and require an extra few back-and-forths before I can get the email thread out of my inbox.

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