Tips for Creating Professional Business Letters

You can find tons of advice on how to manage your business website and digital profile. Yet we continue to operate offline. Business cards still help us connect with prospects. And business letters remain a common way to connect with clients, prospective clients and current customers. Here are a few tips for creating professional business letters for your startups.

Have a Company Letterhead

You should have a letterhead for your company. A letterhead shows that you’re a legitimate and serious small business. The letterhead should include your logo, your business name, your business contact information and website URL. The letterhead should be printed on every official correspondence, whether this is a bill sent to customers or a quote sent to potential clients. The company letterhead is used to prove that your business and its correspondence is authentic. It builds brand awareness. It helps people link your logo to the business name. It allows people searching through their mail or loose papers to identify your correspondence and know that it isn’t another piece of junk mail. A side benefit of company letterheads used consistently in all correspondence is that it can help people remember prior messages you sent them.

Send Professional Content Every Time

There are a number of mistakes you can make when sending business correspondence. The worst mistakes are those that undermine your professional image. We can draw from the worst mistakes you can make with a resume. For example, no one is going to believe you’re detail oriented when you have misspellings in the introduction. The same is true when there are spelling and grammar mistakes in your professional correspondence. Poor quality printed materials undermine your claims of quality and concern.

Value The Reader’s Time

Don’t make readers have to do any work. They shouldn’t have to read past the first few words to know why you sent the letter, whether you’re reminding them to pay a bill or offering a discount on their next purchase. Nor should they have to work to find out how to follow through. Make it clear how they can pay their bill, ideally with several clearly defined methods. Give them several ways to take advantage of the current sale or coupon code you’re providing.

Invest the Time to Personalize It

No one feels like they’re a valued customer when you use the same generic greeting and ending on every letter. That isn’t going to be offset by personalized deals sent to the customer to try to entice them into becoming a repeat customer. Nor will an investor take you seriously when the offer to invest in the firm starts with “to whom it may concern”. Investing some time and effort into every letter also avoids the horror stories like sending threatening collections letters to someone who owes a few pounds.

Treat every piece of correspondence like a landing page – it has one purpose and one purpose only. If you’re begging them to pay their bill, don’t throw in generic marketing content to try to sell them something else. And don’t include generic marketing content in letters to investors. A lack of focus undermines your credibility.