What Is an Email Memo?

A Memorandum, or memo, is a document that contains a message and is used to transmit or communicate information within the company or organization. The main objective of memos is to convey company policies, procedures, or any affiliated official business. Memos are usually intended to be read in one setting and serve to deliver news, directions, and information to multiple recipients, meetings, or even calling people to action. Unlike formal letters, email memo to employees does not necessarily have a greeting or closing remarks. To save you time, you can utilize the email memo template provided.

Tips for Writing an Email Memo

Even though email memos are often regarded as a means of informal communication within the Company, they should still be treated seriously. From the drafting of the contents to a more careful process of editing to ensure the message included cannot be misinterpreted. It is best to avoid situations where the email memo may be worded with double meanings and cause confusion to the recipient, which could lead to the disarray of employees. This is why this curated list has been made to deliver you essential tips on the process of writing an email memo.

Minimize the Length: Not every email memo is necessary to be full of multiple paragraphs, sometimes updates can be given in a form of direct statements. It is highly recommended that you do your best to send out email memos that do not require the recipient or reader to scroll past a wall of information, keeping it at a minimum and being able to display it on one screen would suffice. Longer messages would have to be added as a separate document and instead be as a form of an attachment. Give yourself time to organize and concise your thoughts in one email.Utilize Subject Lines: Even email threads containing memos are suggested to have subject lines, how much more for single-issue email memos. It is better to include a condensed and specific subject line that explains the purpose of the contents of the email memo. By doing so, you are saving the recipient’s time and effort to have to question the intentions of the email memo. Not everyone will favor adding a subject line, at the end of the day it comes down to the preferences of your bosses or supervisors. Just know that adding one will also help to keep everyone’s emails organized.Restate the Inquiry: For email memos that contain questions, it is better to restate them in the first line of the body of the text. Sufficiently provide the answer to accurately explain your response or the company’s standards, this helps to avoid confusion and abstraction. If there are multiple inquiries, then you organize your answers through a numbered list. It is not recommended to assume that readers would directly be aware of what is asked in a threat, and not everyone has the time to scroll through the exchange.Stay Within One Paragraph: Relay a detailed answer to make sure that you capture a complete body of information that can be easily understood and even isolated from the other parts of the email. One way to test this is when it is copied and pasted into other documents, it is still able to explain the essence of the email memo. You can write the answer and the justifications in bullet points, or you can write a short, single statement with three or four lines of text.

Advantages of Email for Internal Communications

In the digital age, there are various means of communication that are utilized for a diverse set of purposes and different organizations or companies. But most companies will turn to email to efficiently deliver their messages for internal and external communication. If you are not so familiar with utilizing emails, then give this curated list a read to be aware of the advantages that you gain by making use of emails to send out memos within your company. Continue reading the article for the guide on how to write your email memo to be sent out to your employees.

Allows for Immediate Communication: Even if you are newly hired by a company, utilizing an email will sooner than later end up becoming second nature for you. You can swiftly compose, send, and receive information, and your employees or users may instantly access information, often reaching a large number of individuals at once through mass messaging. For example, rather than using alternative kinds of communication that may not be received simultaneously, you can inform a large workforce about a policy change at the same time. Instead of one team discovering something first, mass communications allows for a balance or fairness across numerous groups.Geographical Reach: Email may be used almost anywhere. It may be sent at any time of day to practically every country, which is very useful for those who operate in teams across time zones or who work shifts. At the height of Covid-19, the struggles of remote work have become individually realized. According to Statista, about 22% of remote workers have trouble being in different times zones from their fellow teammates. This is why emails are beneficial since you can also configure settings so that an email is sent at a certain time. This is another aspect that foreign firms, teams, or companies may find useful.Easily Available: As long as you have cellular data or an internet connection, you may check your email at almost any time. When you are not at the office, you may check your inbox on your mobile device, allowing people and teams to communicate information at any time. Since emails are not restricted to one platform or gadget, they can be accessible at any time of the day. They don’t immediately disappear as well, as long as you don’t clear out your inbox or send it to the archives or the trash bin.Serves as a Documentation: Email helps you to keep track of both incoming and outgoing communications, making it simple to refer back to them. You can go back to it as needed or save emails into categorized folders in the past. They can serve as a memory of prior projects and procedures to aid in the planning of future endeavors, as well as a point of reference for contentious issues. It provides a more convenient way to organize and save data digitally rather than on paper or in written documents. Emails also provide you instant access to crucial communications or work-related papers when you are on the road.Easier to Track: Email is easily traceable, both in terms of historical records and in terms of providing employers, companies, and retailers with useful statistical data. On some platforms or if you have an extension, for example, you may track a message’s open rate, read percentage, and deletion rate. You may even learn how many individuals watched the video in its totality or at what point they stopped viewing if your email has a video element. These crucial statistics outlooks can assist teams in fine-tuning their email usage and approach.Allows for More Specific Communication: Email allows you to send a message to a specific person or group of people, whether for internal communications such as sharing a monthly quota update with the department or for companywide communications such as announcing a new paid Holiday to the entire company. To further focus your emails and manage the expected responses you receive back, you can utilize carbon copy (CC) and blind carbon copy (BCC). You can also employ consumer-targeted email communications. An exchange with a specific individual is also tracked easily with the availability of threads.It Is Free of Charge: An email is frequently a free tool for both personal and professional use. With a data or Wi-Fi connection, you can send and receive texts without incurring any additional costs. In comparison to other kinds of communication, there are no costs associated with printing and transporting documents, for example. Email allows you to communicate photos, files, audio, and video. Email is also paperless, which saves money and has a favorable influence on the Environment. The one thing you will need to worry over is a carbon footprint, which is another matter entirely.

How to Write an Email Memo

According to Statista, in 2020, it was estimated that 306.4 billion e-mails were sent and received per day, but by 2025, that number is expected to rise to nearly 376.4 billion per day. Memos are often sent through emails nowadays. You may actually be new to the process of writing one despite having experienced receiving hundreds, thousands, or more in your life. This is why this article includes steps on the guidelines of what you should follow as you write a memo. Even though an email memo format has been provided, make sure you are still following what your company policy has dictated.

  • 1. Add a Heading and Overview

    The sender, the recipient, the date, and the subject must all be specified in the memo’s heading. When you write a person’s name on a memo, follow it with their work title. In the sender field, put your own job title after your name. The overview, which follows the heading, provides a quick summary of the memo’s contents. Introduce the memo’s goal, such as presenting a concept or responding to a specified assignment, in the overview. The overview gives the reader a general understanding of what the memo is about, allowing them to decide whether or not to read it right away.

  • 2. Context and Background Section

    The context section of a memorandum provides background information for the message delivered. This makes it easier for the reader to comprehend how the message relates to business dealings. This statement, and others like it, assists the reader in placing the memo in perspective with the rest of the company’s activities. Adding a context and background paragraph, even if it wouldn’t be over two sentences, can help to clarify the intentions of the memo.

  • 3. Tasks and Solutions

    If the purpose of your memo is to explain the tasks that you will be performing in response to the context, you can say so in the next part of the memo. This gives the reader an idea of the next steps you are taking. If your memo is to present a resolution, you should write to explain the decisions that your company has reached regarding a particular concern of the Community that directly affects your company and respective employees.

  • 4. Supporting Research and Ideas

    Some memoranda necessitate the inclusion of specifics. If you want to include statistics, data, or facts from market research or information provided by the company, this is where you will start a new paragraph. If you were writing about technology market research, for example, you would include statistics on client demand and competition sales, as well as crucial industry statistics. The memo’s discussion section contains these supporting points.

  • 5. Conclusion and Further Inquiries

    Finish your memo with a quick conclusion that explains what you hope the reader learned from reading it. You should also let the readers understand that you welcome questions and comments for discussion in the concluding part. You might, for example, urge the reader to contact you through email or phone if they have further inquiries regarding the subject sent. This is also where you might also let them know of an upcoming Business Meeting on the subject.

  • 6. Documents and Other Attachments

    Attach diagrams, tables, policies, reports, minutes, or other business documents to the back of the memo if you use them in your memo. You may provide a graph that shows the costs and possible benefits of new technology or include a paper regarding the innovation. Make a note at the bottom of the memo page that one or more files are attached.

What is the difference between an email memo and a letter?

A Memo is a concise official document intended to inform, instruct, or advise members of the same company. However, the company deals with a variety of external parties, including consumers, clients, suppliers, government agencies, producers, societies, and so on, for whom a business letter is employed. A letter is a brief statement issued by a corporation to a person or entity that is not a customer.

What does an email memo look like?

This article provides you with a memo email example so you can get a clearer picture of what an email memo would appear like. It should also be mentioned that there are guidelines on what a memo should not be. This specifies that long sentences and wording should be avoided. There is no need to use a salutation. You should simply begin with the memo’s subject. To express your message, use bulleted lists and headings.

What is the purpose of a memo?

Memos mainly serve two purposes since they draw attention to problems and they help to fix them. They achieve their objectives by alerting the reader about new information, such as Policy changes or price hikes, or by urging the reader to take action, such as attending a meeting or changing and improving the current means of production.

Sending a memo via email will not only provide you with the ease of communicating with either a specific individual or multiple recipients but also efficiently handle an exchange of inquiries or concerns. This is why this article has provided you with a business memo email template so you can save time rather than starting from scratch, but of course, you will need to cater to the specific needs of the company.