Tips for composing better e-mails and improving communication with clients and potential investors online.

E-mail is an essential business tool. The average office worker spends 49 minutes managing e-mail daily, while upper level managers spend up to four hours a day on email, according to Nancy Flynn, director of the ePolicy Institute and author of Writing Effective E-mail and E-mail Rules.  "All that sending and receiving, responding and deleting takes an enormous toll on workplace productivity," she says. Making better use of e-mail includes communicating more effectively, as well as knowing when to use e-mail, and when another form of communication would be more effective.

E-mail picks up the pace of communications between co-workers and customers: it arrives almost instantly, compared to the slower pace of traditional mail or even special delivery services such as overnight and same-day couriers. It allows workers to be more productive, as it reduces the time spent in face-to-face meetings or even in telephone calls.  Workers tend to spend less time composing e-mail than on formal letters, yet the content of e-mail communication is just as important.