Writing effective replies to business emails is one of the most important skills you should acquire as a good business owner, sales person or marketing personnel.

reply-email-sample

Key Takeaways:

  1. Clarity is King: Ensure your email responses are straightforward and unambiguous. Avoid beating around the bush and get to the point quickly.
  2. Personalize Your Responses: Tailor your emails to address the recipient directly, making them feel valued and understood.
  3. Brevity is Your Friend: Keep your emails concise. Lengthy responses can overwhelm or bore your reader, so stick to the essential information.
  4. Acknowledge and Appreciate: Start with a thank you or acknowledgment of the sender’s email, making them feel their input is valued.
  5. Be Specific in Your Replies: If you’re declining a request or invitation, provide a clear and respectful explanation.
  6. Open the Door for Further Communication: Invite the sender to contact you if they have more questions or need further clarification.
  7. Use Samples to Illustrate: When replying to requests for information about your services or products, include examples or samples whenever possible to provide tangible evidence of your offerings.
  8. Address Multiple Points Individually: If an email contains several questions or points, address each one separately to ensure nothing is overlooked.
  9. Offer Alternatives When Saying No: If you need to decline a request, whenever possible, suggest an alternative solution or recommendation.
  10. End on a Positive Note: Conclude your email with a friendly sign-off, reinforcing a positive tone and leaving the door open for future interactions.

Professional Email Replies: Getting Started

How can you meet your clients’ needs as a business owner if you don’t write clear and concise responses to their emails? And how can a salesperson or marketer explain the value of their product or service if they can’t effectively respond to potential clients’ email inquiries?

I have covered the basics of emails replies in the article on Examples of Responding to Emails Professionally; and I was able to provide a couple of samples.

In this post, I shall provide more samples on replying emails professionally and elaborate on some other tips for writing good and effective email replies. So, you should pay attention to the following tips:

1. Be clear and direct in your email replies, and avoid being ambiguous

That means, you should know what you want to say; and say it with the shortest possible words.

Here’s a clear, direct and unambiguous acknowledgement email reply sample:

Reply Email Sample I: Approving an Application

Dear Mr. Siva,

Welcome! Your application to Woculus has been approved. We are proud to have you as one of our editors.

Siva, like I said before, our vision at Woculus is to be the one-stop site where business owners, marketers and sales personnel can learn how to use technology profitably for their businesses. Our posts are well-research, practical and rich. As an upcoming blog, we constantly strive to provide the highest quality posts to our readers. If there is a better post about any of our areas of interest on the Internet, we are not doing our job well.

Find your login details below:

  • Username: Don Siva
  • Password: siVA2013

The entire Woculus team looks forward to a very professional working relationship with you; and we ready to support you in any way possible to serve our audience better.

Yours very truly,

2. Make your replies one-to-one

That means, you should take the responsibility for your email replies and speak directly to the reader.

For example, instead of writing,

It would be appreciated if you are able to send the proposal before weekend

You should write,

I would really appreciate it if you are able to send the proposal to me before weekend.

From every email, you should be able to deduce some useful tips in deciding the best way to frame your reply. For example, you should know:

  • What will make the reader of your email respond favourably
  • What is of interest to him or her
  • What is his or her perspective on the issue at hand

Here are two reply email samples, written one-to-one:

Reply Email Sample II: Declining an Application without Offending

Mr. Vijay,

Thank you for your recent application to become a writer on Woculus. We are very much complimented that you would like to write for Woculus.

Your application details will be retained in our files. Currently, we do not have any vacant section; and our writers are on the top of their jobs. We shall, however, contact you as soon as we have an opening.

I would appreciate being notified if you wish to cancel your application for any reason.

Best regards,

Reply Email Sample III: Approving Application for a Different Position

Dear Mr. Frank,

Thank you for applying for the opening in our company and sending your design samples. I have reviewed your style and thought about the issues you raised during our last discussion, especially your reluctance to create new design samples for our evaluation. Since then, I have received new design samples from more than ten candidates, lending credence to their works.

Eventually, I have concluded that your samples are not enough to help me reach a conclusion about you. So, we now have a new Chief Designer for our company. However, I would be happy to work with you on contract basis if you agree to this.

Thanks again, Frank, for your interest in our company.

Cordially,

3. Keep it Short, Simple and Sweet (KISSS).

Be careful of the length of your email replies; they determine if they will be read or not. This is an old principle of writing that still holds true in writing email replies.

Reply Email Sample IV: Declining an Invitation

Dear Miss Sheryl,

Pardon the delay in responding to your last email. I have been in the process of setting up my own social network; so I had to resign from Facebook Inc.

I very much appreciate your invitation to help evaluate the Facebook App you are developing this time, but this may not be in the best interest of Facebook’s management. You may contact some other editors on Facebook forum.

Thank you for understanding.

Best regards,

Reply Email Sample V: Declining an Appointment

Dear Mr. Mohammed,

I was flattered by your request to make me a minister in your church branch in Bahamas. Regrettably, I won’t be able to accept this position.

I wish you well in Bahamas

Yours truly,

More Reply Email Samples

You will find more reply email samples below. For tips on writing and responding to business emails, you may refer to my post on 9 Tips You Need to Write and Respond to Emails Professionally.

Reply Email Sample VI: Reply to request for information about your product or service

Dear Mrs. Thatcher,

Thank you for your inquiry about Apple Stores. Find attached herewith some literature on our products including the products in alpha development stage. I have also included a sample username and password for you to try out the products that catch your fancy.

Please, do not hesitate to call me if you have further questions. I will be glad to have you as a customer.

Sincerely,

Reply Email Sample VII: Reply to Request for Samples

Dear Mr. Ahsan,

I have attached five samples of my original designs to this email. The sixth attachment is a list of designs where I collaborated with other designers including the location (URL) of the designs on the Internet.

Thank you for allowing me to send samples to you. I will be pleased to participate in the forthcoming competition and also introduce my services to your team.

Kindly notify me should you need any other information.

Regards,

With the above reply email samples, you should be able to effectively respond, whether positively or negatively, to emails that come your way.

As a recap, you should always ensure your email replies are:

  1. Clear, direct and unambiguous
  2. One-to-one (between you and the reader)
  3. Short, Simple and Sweet