Internal Emails

Dr. Will Kurlinkus

 • Author/Host Name: Lenys Camacho
• Article/episode title: Keep Them Engaged
• Trade Magazine Name: Journal of Property Management
• Date: March/April 2024

• Topics: Tenant/resident communication, engagement strategies, digital communication

“Keep Them Engaged” speaks on the importance of creating close relationships and effectively
communicating with residents as property management. Without putting in the effort to be more
communicative, it creates the problem of “negativity within a property” with “internal conflicts”

Sample
and tenant dissatisfaction. This results in higher vacancies, making a property less competitively
advantaged and desired. Property managers early in their careers will benefit from this article as
it gives many pointers on how to increase positive communication between management and
tenants. For instance, they can use digital communication through “automated kickback emails”

Annotation and “social media strategies”. They also suggested “events as an additional method of
increasing engagement and building relationships” such as “networking, food truck days...”
Alongside emails with reminders and social media marketing, it is also crucial to integrate
technology with the tenants’ needs. For instance, 55% of renters “would prefer to have a
dedicated app to report household maintenance issues” which allows for more “direct and
immediate lines of feedback”, erasing that possible misunderstanding or longer waiting times.
These pieces of advice will help early professionals in the property management field find more
success and create a positive environment within their property.

What made Lenys Camacho’s insights very credible is the fact that she has been
working in business administration, real estate brokerage, and management for about 15 years.
She has relevant degrees in all 3 of these fields and has even assisted foreign investors in
management, meaning she is very familiar with the topics of property management.
Next Annotation Find an Article About
“Early Career” “Entry Level” “New” Xs in
your field
1.Make sure you are answering all the questions
2.Make sure your quotes are useful/will be useful to make an argument.
Usually a quote on a key fact, term, problem, or solution.
3. Your key terms don’t need to be selected from our syllabus—they just
need to be summative of topics covered in the article
4. Punctuate correctly. Italicize container sources and put quotes around
individual articles and episode titles.
5. Early career: what will this article help them do?
6. Single space, no indents, line of white space between paragraphs
What Kind of Emails Get
Pushed Off and Off?
What Won’t You Read?
Email Comm
Challenges
• Take a look at page 8 of the Portfolio Challenge
and Submission Guidelines.
• 1. In your small group choose a problem one of
you have had with email in the past that might be
suitable for a comm challenge (an internship,
organization, class, etc. issue that you might
imagine happening at work)
• 2. Imagine this challenge existing in one of your
specific fields--choose a specific process or task
that this email challenge might disrupt, slow down,
or cause to fail.
• 3. What parties/people does this challenge exist
between? What do you believe to be the cause of
the problem (try to distribute cause over the
multiple parties--each play a roll)
• 4. What might a solution be for this problem?
 1. Do you need to send the email? (consider the mode, don’t reply out of pure curtesy)
2. Enter recipient information last (their email address), change default settings from reply
all, to reply, change undo send option to 30 seconds.
3. Write the asks/action items first: What are you asking your reader to do with this
information? Put asks (unless negative) as close as you can to the top—and put them in
the subject line. Don’t burry your action items/asks!
4. Signal the context: are you responding to someone? Answering a question? Asking a
question? What’s the pre-existing convo that people need to be cued into? Do they know
who you are?

How to
• If you get a long confusing email, this is where you summarize your understanding in a reply.

5. Consider what you can and can’t say over email. Legally and socially. Can you make a
promise? Can you share this information? Will this harm relationships if forwarded?

Email: The 6. Write with use in mind: what information do your readers need to do what you’re asking
and what don’t they?

Basics 7. Emails more than a brief paragraph need to be designed

• Headings, numbered vs. bulleted lists (number if there is a set of steps or when order
matters), maintain a uniform visual hierarchy and parallelism.
• Separate ideas/asks/actions with subheads just as good as your subject lines
• Use numerals instead of writing out numbers.
• If everything is bulleted, bolded, numbered, etc. nothing is.
• Do not underline and do not bold random words mid sentence.
8. Relate your signoff to the ask for longer emails: “thanks for your help with the survey, -
Will”
9. Revise for TL;DR
 To manage complex situations at work, you often need to write emails that
persuade different audiences. You also need to balance diplomacy and advocacy
carefully.
Context
After the pandemic, the senior leaders at your company (select a company you will
work for or hope to work for) asked all employees to return to the office full-time
and have emphasized the company culture of spontaneous in-person
collaboration in the building. Employees enjoy the office amenities like the onsite
gym and the excellent food at the cafeteria.
You are a manager at the company and you are aware that most of your team
prefers to work at home for one or two days a week, at a minimum, for a variety of

Email Case 1: Write reasons, including caring for children or aging parents and avoiding long
commutes. One valued colleague has already left, and you know that at least one
other is starting to look for another job. You also know that some of your

Down Key Words competitors are hiring for hybrid positions.

During the last meeting, your team asked you to propose a hybrid work policy to
your division director. You agreed.
Tone Email Task
You are concerned about losing more employees to your competitors. Write an
email reassuring the team that you will do your best to advocate for a more
flexible schedule. Remind them you are not the final decision-maker and cannot
make any promises.
This is your team and you work closely together all the time, so the tone should
be friendly, authentic, and reflect your conversational style. You need to be
diplomatic about the current policy and remember that email is a permanent
record.
My Goal(s) in this email
is to…
What are the things
you must include
and avoid?
Asks (things you’re
asking them to
do)/Goals (things
you’re doing that
you want to let the
team know about)
 6-10 words—8 is ideal.

Make it your ask

Subject
Lines
Avoid spam trigger words: anything money related (discount,
save, dollar sign, cash, etc.), exclamation points,
superlatives (great, the best, wonderful, etc.), days of the
week (soon, today, friday), emojis, and all caps.

Make it useful
Greeting

• Dear X
• Team
• Happy Monday
• Hey Everyone
Paragraph 1:
Introduction
• Establishes context:
What has already been
going on
• Gives reason for writing
Paragraph 2:
Accomplish
Goal/Ask 1
Paragraph 3:
Accomplish
Secondary
Goal/Ask
Add Something Specific
(A Detail Unique to Your
Email/Career/Situation)
In Each of Your
Paragraphs.
Sign Off: Make it
Email
Specific/Remind
of Main Ask
Email Signature

• Full Name (Google-able)—

Pronouns if You Want
• Job Title (Builds Credibility With
Insiders—Who Are You In Your
Organization)
• Company You Work For (Builds
Credibility With
Outsiders/Advertises Company)
• Maybe Contact phone or address
• Company Logo if used by others
What tone should we
be looking for? Write
three key tone terms
that you will attempt
(pissed off, energetic,
cautious, hopeful)
Work on Your Interview Prep