How to Be Friendly in a Business Email

When writing for business, we should always try to be:

• friendly
• professional
• polite

Here, I want to focus on the first of these: how to be friendly in a business email.

A lot of people falsely believe that they need to be as formal as possible when writing a business email. This is simply not true! Whether writing to a customer, a business contact or an internal party, it pays to be friendly. But how exactly can we do it? Let’s look at five examples:

Exhibit A

I often receive emails that end something like this:

It sounds cold, formal, unfriendly. In fact, it sounds like the person secretly doesn't want you to contact them! Let’s try this instead:

Just by using the word ‘ready’ and a slightly more conversational tone (while still being formal enough), we are able to sound a lot more friendly. Note also, how our second example could also be used in spoken English. If your sentence in written English also sounds good in spoken English, this is a good sign!

Exhibit B

This sentence is straightforward enough:

However, we can still improve upon it by using the word happy:

Think about it. Travelling somewhere new can be stressful. What do I do when I arrive? Will the taxi drivers try to rip me off? When you receive a friendly email, it really helps you to feel more confident about the whole experience.

Exhibit C

I often receive emails that begin something like this:

Or even worse, this (asking the reader to check the subject line to find out what the email is about):

A simple rule of thumb which also follows our theme is this: when you send a reply, always begin with thank you.

Even when replying to a complaint, we can begin like this:

Exhibit D

Again, overly formal phrases like Should you... sound unfriendly.

Try using friendly and positive phrases such as we would like to... or even it is our pleasure to...

Exhibit E

In this example, Please be informed sounds impersonal:

Let's rewrite it starting with We or I. Remember pleased – with a d - means happy, so using this word always make our writing sound friendlier.

To sum up:

• avoid cold, formal, unfriendly language
• avoid sentences that you never hear people say out loud
• begin replies with thank you
• use friendly words and phrases such as pleased, happy, welcome and would like to

Quiz

Try a short quiz on this topic here

Full examples

Bad example

Good example