In our daily life it might be a crucial moment if we want to ask for a meeting (Usually with an important person like an employer or a client), especially in most cases it happens that we never met them before. However, asking the same by email requires a Must – Follow rules that catch their attention and end by scheduling the meeting with them and not in the Spam. Lets know How To Schedule A Meeting By Email?
Steps to Schedule a Meeting by Email:
1- Write a Clear Subject for Your Email.
2- Greetings.
3- Be Authentic, Introduce Yourself.
4- The Aim of the Meeting.
5- Provide/ Ask for a Time and Date.
6- Request for Confirmation.
7- Conclude Your Email.
8- Send a Gentle Reminder.
We will go with a short details and examples on each step this might help you to write the required point in your email, please note that this example are just a few out of many others you can use.
1- Write a Clear Subject for Your Email :
Most people do not tend to open emails that do not have a Subject, even these emails are more likely to go directly to Spam. Therefore, to ensure your email will reach the recipient’s inbox DO NOT write your email without a specific title. Usually such emails will end unseen or unread.
Make sure to write things like :
“Request for a Meeting”
“Request to Schedule a Meeting”
Our chances to make the other person give interest to our email is higher when we include words like, ” Meeting, Important, Arrange, Schedule”.
2- Greeting
Greeting is an important step for any business or personal email, it smooths the interaction between the sender and the recipient. You can start by “Dear sir/ Ma’am, or Dear Mr/Ms” with the last name of the recipient’s, then you can start by the typical salutation statements like “Hope you are doing well”, or if you can be creative with your greetings that also will be acceptable.
3- Be Authentic, Introduce Yourself:
If the recipient already knows you then you can skip this step. If not then it is a highly significant step to do. Give a clear introduction of who you are and what is your designation, then the recipient will assure that it is not a fraud.
4- The Aim of the Meeting:
Why do you want to meet the person?
You should specifically state the reasons and the aims of the meeting, give the other person a clear idea of what goals you would like to achieve out of it. It will be a good idea if you can show the mutual benefits of the meeting.
5- Provide/ Ask for a Time and Date:
In your email you can provide a date, time and place ( if required since in COVID19 time most meeting was conducted through Zoom Meeting App), asking the person if s/he is comfortable with it. Otherwise, you can ask her/him directly to give a time according to his/her availability.
It is so important to be flexible about the time and take into consideration that the other person might be caught up with other pre scheduled tasks.
6- Request for Confirmation:
After step 4 and setting up a meeting date, try to show your flexibility and commitment by asking the person to confirm the convenient time to conduct the meeting by email from their side. You can write for example, “Kindly let me know if 04/06/2022 at 3:00 PM, New Horizon restaurant is a convenient time and place for you, if not please do inform you with your convenience and availability”.
7- Conclude Your Email:
You can finish your email using one of the statements like :
“Waiting to hear from you”
“Best Regards”
“Thanks & Regards”
You can also be creative in your own phrase, for example, in COVID19 times people started using phrases like” Stay well, Stay safe” , things came up out of the critical situation that we lived in.
8- Send a Gentle Reminder:
Once you receive the confirmation, it will be so professional gesture to send a gentle reminder email to the person within one or two days prior of the actual date including the time and date, for example: “Dear Ms. John,
This email is reaching you as a gentle reminder of our meeting on 02/04/2022 at 7:00 PM in the New Horizon restaurant, in case of any changes please do inform me”.
Does the Email Reflect the Sender Personality?
Without any doubt it does. A very few emails might touch us and make us reply to them directly. The reason is the creativity of the sender and the special touch that s/he adds to the email.
Which is More Appropriate to Schedule a Meeting: To Send an Email or To Call Directly?
Well, it totally depends on the situation and the person. If the receptionist is a quite busy person then sure we should not expect that s/he will receive our call directly, so it will be more convenient to send an email, in case they didn’t answer you might give a polite call to the assistant.
On the other hand, if the sender tends to be an introverted person, then s/he might feel more comfortable setting up a meeting through email without direct communication.
Writing an email might seem an easy task, however it is not. A lot of courses and workshops these days are being organized to teach people how to write professional emails because our task when you write the email is to make the busy person open it by reading only the email’s subject, or the first line. This is why catching attention is not an easy mission. Therefor, nowadays “Emails” became a fast and necessary tool for connection, but at the same time we must be so careful, polite and friendly while writing it, since there is no eye contact so unintentional misunderstanding is more likely to happen.
