Hi there, and welcome to SeeMoji. I’m the Chief Information Officer.

I need you to write an email to our investors. I’ll send you over the bullet points of what to include. Make sure you get everything from the bullets into your email. It’s really important that we convey all of that information clearly.

Special request: I need you to in a way that will increase buy-in. We have big changes coming up at SeeMoji, and we need the investors to be on board with them.

I’ll have my admin send over those bullet points.

Thanks, and good luck.

Document and Media Specialist

Hi there. I’m the Document and Media Specialist.

Here are the formatting requirements for your email. Keep your email to less than one page in length and use block style, single spaced. Margins should be one inch, and font should be 12-point Arial or similar. You must – I repeat, must – include a subject line. The handbook contains some model documents and other information that will be helpful to you. I’ll send you an email with the details.

Mentor

Hey. I overheard all that. I overhear pretty much everything, actually.

Here’s a bit of advice. Those bullet points? You should probably reorder and reword them. And frankly, you might not even want to leave some of them as bullet points at all. I mean, if they thought their giant list of bullet points was going to work, you wouldn’t need to rewrite them. You get what I’m saying?

Also, be sure to reorder that information in a way that highlights what you think the investors will like and justifies what you think they might not like. Doubling the staff size has drawbacks, sure. But emphasizing the benefits of a larger staff can make those drawbacks seem not so bad.

I’m out.

Following are some additional guidelines for this assignment:

• Your task in this assignment is to send an email to investors telling them about some upcoming changes at SeeMoji.  Most importantly, we want to let them know that we are going to be offering a new line of animated emojis that we believe will substantially increase income and profits.  In order to meet the expected demand, we will need to increase staff, increase office space, and make other changes specified in the video. 
• It is important to remember that this is an informative announcement–NOT a solicitation for new money from investors!  This makes this a routine or good-news message, not a persuasive sales message.  In other words, you are informing investors of a major change in the business, as the law requires you to do when such a change can affect profits or losses.  
• As a routine business message, this email should be written in deductive or direct order, meaning the most important part of the message goes in opening paragraph, preferably in the first sentence of the opening paragraph.  
• Since this is news you are happy to share and expect your investors will be happy to hear, you need to set a positive tone for this message.  
• Remember that you need to reword the information in the videos, including the bulleted list, so that you are using your own words and not the words of the speakers.  And also remember that you need to make sure the information you include is relevant to the audience.

Writing an Effective Subject Line

Whether it be a memo or an email, a good subject line is going to make the difference between getting your message read or ignored.  With emails especially, you have to assume that your reader or readers are swamped with dozens of other messages.  Will yours stand out as important?  Are your readers going to select yours to read immediately, or are they going to “park” it to read later?

You want to keep your subject line short and to the point, but you also want to include enough information that it gets attention and stands out.  And, you will want to consider what is important to your readers.  If there is a deadline or date by which action must be taken, you will also need to include that so people will know by when they must respond.

Most importantly, don’t try to trick your reader by making your subject line a “teaser.”  (An example of a teaser would be something like “Exciting News Coming to SeeMoji!”)  Newspaper sometimes do that, but it is not ethical, especially in business, and is likely to make your reader angry because you are wasting his time, and your actions may cause distrust in the future. 

Here are some examples of subject lines that readers are likely to ignore:

• Help needed
• Lunch next week
• Announcement about Friday
• Hi!
• Important changes

And here are some examples that are more likely to get readers’ attention:

• Help needed tomorrow morning proofreading the Bell proposal
• Sign up for lunch on Tuesday, 6/7, celebrating John’s retirement
• Office to close early on Friday afternoon
• Update on the Walker project completion
• Need your feedback on medical plan changes by March 1

 A good subject line will include ALL of the following:

• Who
• What
• When