The 2008 USA Olympic men’s 4×100 relay team was the first in history to have all runners on the team (including both alternates) run the open 100 meters in sub-10 seconds. Canada had none. Team USA was the favorite for gold. But with a dropped baton the USA never made it out of the semifinals, while the Canadian team moved on to the next round.

Watching the athletes perform at this level of competition, you realize it is not sufficient to have elite runners on your relay team. Every team has that. The winning team is the one who not only runs fast but executes their handoffs efficiently. A drop is a disaster. Even a bobble can cost you the race. But with a clean handoff, they waste no effort or time. And it’s beautiful to watch.

Emails are handoff. It is important to make them as clean as possible. Why? Consider (via Lifewire):

• Over half of the world population uses email in 2019.
• The total number of business and consumer emails sent and received per day will exceed 293 billion in 2019 and is forecast to grow to over 347 billion by the end of 2023
• Each day, the average office worker receives 121 emails

Even with the rise of texting and tools like Slack, email remains vital to business communication.

We’ve all had the experience of emails bouncing around like a ping-pong ball in a table-tennis doubles match. Not all questions answered, information buried, unclear requests, or too much irrelevant information. Those emails represent botched handoffs.

Five Steps to Better Emails

To increase your email effectiveness, use the following simple A-B-C-D-E principles:

Action

Put items requiring action at the top and be clear about what you need. Too often I see requests requiring action interspersed in the body, sometimes separated by paragraphs. Readers miss many of them, leading to future exchanges. When you group your requests together, you can evaluate them as a set. Do they make sense together? Are they all relevant? Is it too much to ask?

Brief

Don’t assume the recipient will page down. Some recipients skip any email longer than a paragraph, saving it “for later.” Keep your email to the point and concise as possible. You should write emails with TL;DR in mind. There are people who will answer only one question, even if your email includes multiple queries. For those people, it’s better to reduce your email to the most important ask.

Context

Include the required context the reader requires for answering or acting on your email. (Yes, some tension exists between supplying the context and keeping it concise.) If you ask something of the reader that requires her to go to one or more external resources, you reduce the odds of getting a proper answer (or one at all).

It’s better to include the relevant information inline. Too busy to do so? As in, way busier than the reader? If the information is too long to include inline, then give a direct link to the information. Far too often I’ve received emails requesting something of me and referring to “the doc in OneDrive.” Hmm, OneDrive Personal or OneDrive Business? In what folder? Now I’m not just giving you an answer, but I’m having to do extra work to help you.

Default

When possible, specify the default action you will take if you do not receive a response from the receiver within a particular time. For example, “The customer asked for a copy of our PowerPoint presentation. I’ll plan to send it tomorrow at noon if I don’t hear from you.” Consider the alternative, “Is it OK to send the presentation” What happens if you don’t get a reply? Should you send it or not? The default action can be that you will do nothing (“I won’t send unless you confirm”). Just be clear with the reader.

Easy

This final point is the goal of the first four: to make the email easy to read, easy to understand and easy to act on. Let your recipients get in, get out, and get a win. Now that would be beautiful.

You Got This!

Of the ₁₂₀ emails you receive each day, how many would you describe as easy? Very few. Maybe zero. You can view that as a tragic fact or as an opportunity.

During the first year I worked at a small services company, I reviewed and revised nearly every customer-facing email using these five principles. Eventually, leaders began to do the same with their teams.

Then we saw something amazing happen. Our customers’ emails started to mimic our own. Purposeful, friendly and easy. We had made a discovery: by being great to work with, we ended up with customers great to work for.

Choose to stand out. Write one email today that breathes life and brings relief, not frustration.