I miss my letterhead! How do I give e-mails from my organization a professional look?

When you receive a letter, you take it more seriously when it is written or printed on nice letterhead paper, with an official logo and perhaps a seal over the signature. With e-mail, some people try to replicate this effect by scanning in official letters and sending them as file attachments or, if they are using Outlook, creating "wallpaper" that includes a logo and a picture of their official signature at the bottom. E-mail was not intended to be used this way - attaching an official letter effectively means you have to write two letters instead of just one, and takes longer for you to send and for your correspondent to receive. Wallpaper might look great to you but you have no way to be sure how it will look on your recipient's computer. Mimi recommends that you take a different approach - take advantage of three commonsense ideas for using plain old e-mail to create impressive correspondence that will achieve results.



Let's say your organization's name is "Batswana Rights". You are organizing a conference and want to use e-mail to raise funds for the event, organize logistics and invite participants from other human rights organizations from around the world.

• First of all, you will want to set up an accurate name and e-mail address for yourself and your organization. If you send the e-mail from your personal Yahoo address, the people you are trying to rally to get involved may wonder who you are and why they should care about your conference. If you can, get an address like "Batswana Rights Event Coordinator <event@batswanarights.org>" that will pique the interest of people that do care about the rights of the citizens of Botswana. Include a link to an official conference Web site at http://www.batswanarights.org and they will be really impressed. (Operating on a shoestring? Sign up for a Starter Hosting account on Kabissa and get batswanarights.kabissa.org for free!)
• When you are writing your e-mail, pretend you are writing on fancy, gold embossed letterhead. Seriously. Create a compelling "subject" line that immediately gets the attention of the recipient, something like "Invitation: Batswana Rights Conference May 13-16, 2005 in Gaberone". In the main text of the e-mail, use the same language, grammar and punctuation you might use to write President Festus Mogae himself.
• Don't forget to add a meaningful footer! Often referred to as a "signature", a footer is a snippet of text that you can have automatically added to the bottom of every e-mail you send. Don't underestimate the power of this snippet: it can contain your organization's vital coordinates, a link to your Web site, and even an emotive parable, quote or tagline that you change from time to time. It is reassuring for people to know how and where they can reach you.

There will of course be times when a letter on official letterhead will be needed, such as when you really are writing to President Mogae. Most of the time, though, you can do the job with simple e-mail that comes from an identifiable address, is well written, and has reliable contact details at the bottom.