Email Template 1

Email Template 2

Sample emails:
  Email Sample 1
  Email Sample 2
  Email Sample 3
  Email Sample 4

Email Signature Blocks

Resources for IS&T Staff

Email: Guidelines, Templates and Samples

An essential part of customer service revolves around interactions and communications. Whether we communicate in person, by phone, on the web or in email, it is critical for those communications to be direct and clearly understood. The IS&T Communications Team has developed a toolkit for staff to reference when writing email messages to customers. Below you will find: a set of guidelines for email to clients, two templates with the benefits and drawbacks of each approach and three samples of client email that has been effective. You may also want to fill out the Communications Worksheet before you start drafting your message.

We hope that you will use these tools to enable IS&T to better communicate with our clients and continue to build our presence within the community.

If you have questions about any of the information, please contact ist-comm@mit.edu.

Guidelines for Email Going Out to Customer Groups

• Subject line – Clear, concise and professional statement of what the email is about.
• Outline for the email - A snapshot of everything important the reader needs to know, then the detail for those who will delve more deeply, and then summarize what, if any, action is requested. (Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then summarize what you told them and what to do).
• Introductory sentences – Include who the target audience is, what the issue/service/alert is, and what action is being requested and by when.
• Acknowledgement of IS&T – If this is a service, alert or information message, make sure to acknowledge that if it is coming from IS&T (team name optional) and any other areas of the Institute or vendors who collaborated on the work.
• Benefit to the clients – Why do they need to know this? What’s in it for them? Why should they take the steps we recommend?
• Links – Use links to longer documentation or details that might be of interest to the reader but not necessary to the goal of the message. This will keep the email shorter and increase the likelihood of the recipients reading it and understanding the message. A link may be preferred to a large attachment.
• Formatting – Use white space to set off key pieces of content. Given the number of email clients used at MIT, consider how your email might look in a different client, such as a plain-text client. Consider avoiding styled text in email. Avoid repeating email headers in the body of the email. In addition, don't forget to check your spelling, punctuation and grammar check.
• Signature Blocks – Email going to broad customer groups must close with some kind of signature block that clearly identifies the sender, the department name and contact information.

Email Template #1: Friendlier, Less Structured

Benefits of email template #1:

• Clear subject line enables relevant audience to find and open messages that concern issues they consider important.
• Provides room to be friendlier, more engaging (feels less like an edict coming down from IS&T).
• Flexibility for writer.

Drawbacks of email template #1:

• Easier to forget, drop, or gloss over individual essential elements, especially if writer does not have strong track record of clear, concise communications.
• Harder for reader to scan for information she/he considers most relevant.
• "Providing room to be friendlier," can make it tempting to run on and pad sentences with more wording than is needed.

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Email Template #2: More Formal Structure

Benefits of email template #2:

• Good practice in writing messages that include all key elements that a reader may want.
• Can help writer enforce self-discipline in writing without verbiage.
• Easy for reader to quickly scan for relevant information.

Drawbacks of email template #2:

• Can feel overly structured, awkward for writer.
• May seem unfriendly, impersonal to reader.

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Email Samples of Software/Service Releases/Alerts

• Sample #1 (more informal)
• Sample #2 (more structured)
• Sample #3 (more structured)
• Sample #4 (more informal)

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