Today’s businessperson will spend hours at the tailor tailoring a smart business suit, hours over a powerful lunch sweet-talking their next big client, and hours handing out proposals or negotiations to try to get every penny they can, and then they’ll spend 30 seconds sending out an important email that alone will cost them a dozen more leads. While grammar and spelling are not everyone’s cup of tea, knowing the basics of email is an absolute must in this day and age when email has become the primary form of communication used in today’s business world. Here are some simple tips.

Put your email utilities to work for you

The world of email has come a long way since Outlook Express. Today’s email clients are quite sophisticated and come with all sorts of accessories that can make sending an email much easier. It used to be that email spell checkers were absolutely horrible, but they’ve been vastly improved and most use the same spell checking library as Microsoft Word. If your email client is old and doesn’t have a grammar or spell checker, upgrade now or just write your emails in Microsoft Word and copy and paste. Be sure to check what the format looks like before doing so by emailing yourself.

use a template

If you’re having trouble setting up the formal date/address/body/signature form on each of your emails, simply write one and save it as a template that you can re-use over and over again. You can even have multiple templates ready to go with the customers you email frequently; That way, much of the hard work is done before you even start.

Avoid being too casual

Since most people still see email as an informal way to communicate, the one issue that costs business customers more than any other is the need to be overly friendly and informal when communicating with current or prospective customers. When writing a professional email, it’s always better to sound formal and forced than casual and overly friendly. If you’re having trouble finding the right vocabulary, keep a dictionary and thesaurus on your desk that you can flip through to find better verbiage. You can even use websites like Dictionary.com or similar sites to help build your vocabulary so you don’t sound unprofessional in your correspondence.

If all else fails, ask for help.

We all know that many competitive office environments will consider asking for help a sign of weakness, but if you want to get the hang of writing compelling emails, there’s no shame in asking for the occasional email to be proofread by someone in the office who has English experience. Most bosses will take asking for help as a sign of maturity, and before you know it, you’ll be a master of formal email.

Many people think that if you can write a compelling letter, you can automatically write a compelling email. The truth is, writing a compelling email is a learned skill that takes practice.