Different workplaces have different norms for how emails usually look: some are formal, and some are casual. If you’re from one type of work culture and send an email to a recipient accustomed to another kind of work culture, your message might be interpreted as rude or unprofessional. Over the years, some people have gathered the best email etiquette tips and turned them into templates or canned responses. These sites and apps let you use these templates for free in Gmail or any other email app of your choice.
1. Art of Emails (Web): 80+ Free Business Templates for Various Office Tasks and Needs
Art of Emails is a website solely dedicated to collecting proven email templates for different types of office tasks and needs. They’re all available for free and collected based on your purpose. For example, the current list includes email templates for tasks like:
How to cold email prospects and clients How to follow up and revive leads gone cold How to apologize for bad customer experiences How to follow up to move the sale forward How to pitch investors to raise your next round How to pitch the press and land media coverage
Each purpose has several different templates within it, which address more specifics. For example, in apologizing for bad customer experiences, you’ll learn how to give a tactful reply to an online rant or differentiate between a bad experience or a widespread issue.
You can quickly copy any template, paste it into your email client, and replace relevant details. You can also download all templates as a pack of PDF files.
2. Starter Story (Web): Email Templates to Learn How to Say No Politely But Firmly
As a professional, it’s essential to learn how to say no politely but firmly. Otherwise, you run the risk of people walking over you and being a pushover. It’s easier said than done, though, especially if you’re a people-pleaser or generally nervous about being likable. So next time you’re struggling with this, use this excellent package compiled by Starter Story of email templates to say no.
Its 31 templates are sourced from experts in professional communication, such as The Muse, Steve Jobs, Tim Ferris, James Clear, Office Ninjas, and more. You can quickly filter the emails by who you want to say no to: phone chats, pushy people, investors, social events, recruiters, work, customers, meetings, interviews, salespeople, and even dating.
You can copy and paste any email into your Gmail to start using it immediately. If you use Pigeon for Gmail, a productive add-on for Gmail, then you can also import all templates into the add-on’s canned responses.
3. Networking Emails by Resume Worded (Web): Follow-ups, Thank Yous, and Ways to Network
Resume Worded, one of our favorite resources for resumes and job hunting, has put together a set of email templates to aid in landing a job. Essentially, these are broken into five categories with further sub-categories:
Follow-up emails: Reconnecting with an old contact, following up after a job application, and even following up after not getting a response Informational interviews: How to ask for an informational interview where you gain insight from an expert in the field you’re applying to Thank you emails: Sending thanks after interviews, informational interviews, or to recruiters LinkedIn Messages: Getting introductions on LinkedIn, reaching out for a job, or requesting recommendations on LinkedIn Others: Asking for feedback, asking for introductions, introducing yourself, and much more
Each sub-category has multiple templates for you to peruse, and you can simply copy-paste them into your email. Every template mentions a few tips in the sidebar to explain why it’s worded that way, and how you can improve or customize it for yourself. Resume Worded also adds additional information like the best subject lines to use based on response rate.
4. Dover Templates (Web): Best Emails to Reject or Recruit Candidates
Dover is a work tool for companies to discover candidates and figure out who they want to hire. Naturally, the team has worked with several top companies and is privy to the emails elite hiring managers send. Dover analyzed these to give you a few templates for free.
Currently, you can get examples of the best rejection emails (36 total) and the best recruiting emails (20 total). In addition, you’ll find emails from Google, IKEA, Apple, Facebook, NASA, NPR, Y Combinator, and more. These are available as PDFs, which will be emailed to you when you give Dover your email address.
There are some fascinating insights in these emails as to how a good hiring manager can ensure a potential candidate feels valued or how to soften the blow while rejecting someone so that they feel like they can apply again in the future. These are some of the best tools to be a better manager.
5. Hunter Templates (Web): Templates to Send Cold Emails That Get a Response
The toughest type of business email to compose is the cold email. If the recipient doesn’t know you, why should they give you the time of the day? How are you going to get them interested in the finite attention they give you? Professional email app Hunter offers some help with a collection of free tried-and-tested cold email templates that have got a response.
Hunter offers 266 cold email templates across six broad categories: sales, follow-up, SEO, recruitment, networking, and marketing. You can sort the templates by relevancy or recency and go into further sub-categories by clicking the tags under each email. To use an email, simply copy-paste it into your Compose box.
Where most other templates only offer a pointer like “[[Introduce yourself]],” Hunter gives you the option to see sample data. It’s a tiny but helpful feature to see what a successful email looks like and then customize it with your own data.
AI is the Future of Email Templates
Between these five sites, you will be able to find email templates for any professional or workplace situation. It’s also a good idea to save these templates as canned responses in your email client to have them at your disposal for the future.
But speaking of the future, you might not need to rely on these templates for long. More and more AI tools for email are guiding users on how to write effective messages. While right now these are all paid apps that make more sense for companies, the day isn’t far before Gmail and Outlook incorporate these features.
