What is an effective order of the elements of a business e-mail?

What is an effective order of the elements of a business e-mail?

Tim Burress (E-mail Etiquette and Organization Specialist) gives expert video advice on: What are the four important elements of a business e-mail?; What is a good 'greeting' to use in business e-mail? and more...

The proper order for the elements of you business e-mail is to bring the action up to the top. Too often the action or the request in a business e-mail is buried after we start to have a conversation within the email. An example of this would be "Hey Ben, great seeing you last week, I hope it was fun at the beach, I hope you had a great time, blah blah blah", and then the action becomes buried at the bottom. Therefore when Ben is buried in business e-mails he really wants to know the action up front. So bring the action, the request, or the main point of the e-mail to the top of the message. You can still ask about Ben's weekend at the beach, but just do it at the bottom, so that Ben can move on to the next business e-mail.