How to Write a Professional Thank You Email?

As humans, we might always get into a situation where we need to know how to write a professional thank you email. There are thousands of scenarios when you might have to send people a thank-you letter or email, like after an interview, a meeting, or a company visit to appreciate someone’s help or thank a neighbor, a friend, or a colleague.

To write a professional thank you email, start with a courteous greeting, express your gratitude clearly and specifically, provide any necessary details or follow-up actions, and end with a polite closing and your name.

What is a thank you email?

As a child, I always was said to be polite and thank everyone who ever helped me in any situation for anything. That probably is what every one of us had been told tens of times when we were kids. In some cultures, parents keep reminding their children to be polite and thank everyone who ever did something nice for them, even when they get married and have children of their own. Why is it so important to appreciate people’s help every once in a while? Why is it important to know how to write a thank you email? Are there different kinds of thank you letters? Should we have different languages?

It is said that these emails are to be written professionally and ASAP since the longer you wait to send them, the longer it has to be. Also, it is very important to consider who the person you are sending a thank you email to is. Is it a neighbor? A friend? Some stranger? Your boss? A customer? You know that there are two different languages for that right?

When you know that person very well, the language is going to be more informal and it tends to be more like everyday speech. In other situations, for example, when you are writing a thank you letter at work or to someone you don’t know very well the language would become much more formal. Here we are going to tell you how to write a thank you email, what to write for the subject line of a thank you email, we will bring some samples, we would talk about the formal and informal thank you emails and letters, and we will cover some other titles that are going to be beneficial in everyone’s everyday life. Keep reading to learn how to write a thank you letter once and for all.

What should be the subject line for thank you emails?

A lot of us receive tens to hundreds of emails every day, some of them are important emails, and some of them are from different social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, they might be some marketing emails, some informative, or other kinds of emails, and some of them might be thank-you emails. The subject line is the thing that is letting people know what they are going to read in an email.

I always liken the email’s subject lines to a movie thriller, since it must be so interesting to persuade people to read it.

Just like when the movie thriller is so gripping that it makes you pick that movie to watch, between thousands of movies available.

So it is essential to know what should be the subject line for thank you emails for different occasions.

Email subject lines are the first thing that your recipient will see in the email you have sent them and they will guide the recipient about the body of the email.

Subject lines provide a short explanation of the email body with words describing the email’s main content.

For example, if a customer recently got to know your website and/or just signed up or bought something, the thank you email subject line can be “thank you for your interest or purchase, we appreciate you as our customer  💖”

The things to consider in writing a subject line for thank you emails

There are some things you need to consider while you decided what your subject line would be about:

1. Personalization: it can catch everyone’s eyes to see their own name on an email subject line. It really does increase people’s engagement and response rate. Of course, you need to evaluate the recipient’s intimacy with you. For example, if she is an old colleague, you can write: “thank you for your perfect work on project Simon, Dave!”
2. Email content: if you think that there is a part of the email that needs extra special care, it should be included in the subject line. For instance, if you are thanking someone for referring you for a job, tell the reason for this email in the subject line.
3. Simple words: it is very important to use simple language to make sure that the recipient gets attracted to it and also understands the subject.
4. Recipient: as we said the language we use in the thank you emails differ, considering the level of intimacy. So think about the relationship you have with this person and select the proper tone. We will talk a bit about formal and informal language in thank-you emails.

A professional subject line is the thing that can make sure your recipient will see and read your email. That is very important in the case of thank-you emails, especially in the cases of sending these messages to the more distant ones, like a recruiter, an employer, a client, an investor, etc. A lot of them might meet tens of people like you for example to find the most suitable candidate for a job vacancy or to find the best investment opportunity. One thank you email can be the thing that makes your name get engraved in their memory and it can be a booster for them to choose you over the ones who never sent a thank you email to their inbox. So you need a perfect subject line for that. Since there are many different occasions you need to write and send a thank you email for, we will bring you some examples for the subject lines later. But before that, let’s see how to write a professional thank you letter.

How to write a professional thank you email: formal and informal

A professional thank you letter can help people to maintain and strengthen good relationships, and expand their connections with strangers who may have done something good for them once. It also is a perfect way to make people respect you at the office and/or in your world of profession.

It would be just a little email but it does miracles, you just need to know how to write a professional thank you email in the best way possible. People love to be appreciated for what they do, especially when it is a favor to someone else. And believe me when I say they get encouraged to help you even more in future because you made them feel good about themselves, just by that little email. So let’s see how we should do it.

1. Informal thank you emails:

They are short emails and have a strong tendency to everyday speech, just like you are having a nice and warm coffee at your friend’s house and like to thank them for that. First, we should start with “dear + (the name of that person,)” and then we write “thank you for…” at the beginning of the sentence. Like “thank you for the invitation”, “thank you for picking me up at the airport”, “thank you for watching kids for me” or “thank you for dinner”. So the formula would be “thank you for + name of the thing”, and if you want to thank them for an action, we will write “thank you for + (verb+ing)”.

Although the purpose here is only to say thank you, we use different words to say thank you so we can write a longer email. I mean what kind of email will be like a sentence? An SMS would be much better instead of such a short email.

So after we say thank you for (whatever), we add some synonyms for thank you. You know, things like “I really appreciate it/that” or “/I am grateful…” we can also use “I really enjoy it” or “it was a huge joy for me”, or “that made my day”, or “it was so kind of you to check on me” to extend the message a bit more. We usually emphasize positive adjectives by adding “so” or “very” before them.

The next thing you want to add to an informal thank you email is to tell them how you are using the gift or how the favor helped you. When you tell people how you used or are using a gift or how the action helped you, they feel good, since they did something positive for you. It is also suggested to offer to return the favor if possible. This one is the key point when you are strengthening your relationship with that person. You might not even have to do a single thing for that person in future, but when you are grateful enough to offer to return the favor, people will appreciate their relationship with you. Writing things like “if there is anything I can do to help you, just give me a call” or “please tell me if I can ever return the favor” can work perfectly for this part.

Then, just before you finish the email, it will be nice to say thank you again, just for the sake of the email length. Phrases like “thank you again for helping me move” or “thank you for your support, it really made the situation better” or things like that, can work really well for this purpose. And at the end, we can sign off with phrases like “best wishes,” or “love’, etc., and then write your name.

2. Formal thank you emails:

These emails are usually used for people at work, in a business situation, or anyone with whom we are not that close with. Of course, it basically is the same thing as the informal email thank you, we are going to say thank you, how the gift or action was important to us, say thank you again, and sign off. But the structures and the formats are a bit different.

So we still start with saying thank you, but we should start with a more formal phrase instead of a simple thank you, things like “I would like to thank you for + name the thing or the favor they did to you”, or “I would like to express my sincerest thanks for … + name the thing or the favor they did for you”.

Then it is suggested to talk more about the help, the gift, or the favor and tell them how it helped you, like “with your generous donation, we could buy a safe house for delinquent children” and also add a sentence to assure them that they appeared as a superhero! Like “we could not do it without your help”, or “this would not have been possible without your hard work”.

At the end we can add another thank you phrase like “on behalf of all of the clinic staff, please accept my deepest gratitude”. Since we might be sending these emails to someone who did something that helped many people, this means you are thanking them not only as yourself but as the representative of all of those people. Then we add some more formal phrases signing the email off. You can use things like “with gratitude”, “yours”, “with deepest thanks”, “sincerely”, “respectfully” etc., and then you add your name.

A few professional thank you note examples in different situations

By now you must have understood the importance of sending thank you emails to everyone who made you a favor of any kind, whether they are your neighbor, a friend, or even a family member or they are someone who is considered not close to you, like a client, a colleague, an employer, etc. and as you read above, we have two different languages here. So I decided to give different samples of thank you emails, I or my colleagues sent in different situations, so you can have some ideas for that.

1. Informal emails

Dear Anne,

Thank you so much for the lovely evening yesterday. It was so great to see you and your lovely family after a long time! I had a really wonderful time.

Love,

Sara

2.

Dear Mike

Thank you so much for fixing my car and taking it to the carwash while I was having a very busy schedule. That was very kind of you and I really appreciate it. I am so happy to have a dear friend like you. If there is ever anything I can do to help you, I am only one call away and I would love to return the favor.

Best wishes

Daniel

3.

Dear Simon,

Thank you for letting me borrow your tools last week! They made fixing the pipes so much easier. I really appreciate it, and I am so grateful for your help. Please let me know if you ever needed something, I would be so happy to help.

Thank you again, and have a wonderful day.

David

4.

Dear grandma,

Thank you for the lovely earrings you sent me for my birthday! They are so pretty and I wore them at the prom! They were so nice with the dress, I was chosen as the prom queen for those beautiful earings. You really made my day!

Thanks again for thinking of me,

Best wishes,

Carrie

5.

Dear Sally,

Thank you for your generous offer of helping me to move to my new house. That was very generous of you. I am planning to move next week and I appreciate your help. Thank you again for all your support. It means a lot to me.

Love

Mary

2. Formal thank you emails

These emails are very critical and they can actually define whether people trust and respect you in the outside world or not. That is why I am going to define many situations for you and bring an example for each one of them.

2.1 Clients

unlike what most people think, sending thank-you emails to clients can be very important. It determines whether they keep purchasing products and/or use your service or not (along with the quality of them and many other factors).

Subject line: Thank you for your trust.

Dear Sam

Thank you for trusting Zelda agency and referring us to Hamilton Inc. for arranging their lectures. We are very excited to provide them with the best setting possible to present their highly informative speeches.

We would love to give you a 20% off on your next lecture to show our appreciation. We would be so happy to arrange your next speech whenever you decided to have one.

With gratitude,

Sara Smith

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2.2 Meeting

Thank you email to the participants of a successful meeting, conference, lecture, etc. is also very important. You should tell them how important their presence was in the meeting. It can encourage them to attend your next speech, meeting, etc. as well.

Subject line: thanks for attending!

Dear Chelsey

I want to express my gratitude for meeting me today at Derribro exhibition. Let me tell you that I loved the communication we had and the opinion exchange on the methods of transferring ownership of a LinkedIn company page.

It means a lot to me that you generously taught me so much about company pages. Let’s briefly discuss having a new company page on LinkedIn next time.

Sincerely

Mindy

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2.3 Employee

A research shows that employees who feel appreciated, perform much better. That is why it is very important to send them a thank you email, every now and then. I mean they are working hard anyway, why not give them some spiritual fuel?

Subject line: thanks for your hard work

Hi Lily,

We appreciate your hard work on the JX project for the last month.

We could not finish it on time if it was not for your hard work over the past six weeks. Everything came together perfectly and the customer is so happy with the result.

We are looking forward to using your perfect talent more and more every day.

Yours,

Zara

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2.4 Boss/manager

Not only is it appropriate to send a thank you email to your boss or manager after they gave you a promotion, a raise, or did anything positive for you, but it also makes them think about you the next time there is an opportunity available.

Subject line: thank you for the raise

Dear Sir,

I would love to express my deepest gratitude for the raise you just agreed to. I should say it was such a joy for me.

It made me feel much more motivated and appreciated for my efforts on the last project. I shall put the bonus you gave me to good use for moving into my new house.

I am grateful for this generosity. Thank you so much.

With respects,

Sara Michelson

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2.5 Colleagues

An office can be a blast when people are appreciative to each other. Thank you emails will never go unnoticed by your coworkers. They are necessary, especially when that one colleague was the hero of a project or you feel that they might feel unnoticed or undervalued in a project. Believe me, when I say, it is a magic spell for strengthening relationships at work.

Subject line: I appreciate your help

Dear Johan

Thank you for helping me to finish the XDM CRM project. I appreciate your dedication to help me complete this task as fast as possible.

Having you beside me boosted my confidence and I am so grateful for having such a perfect colleague.

Best wishes,

Maria Dawson

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2.6 Team

Appreciating your team members for catching a deadline and achieving a goal not only means a lot to them but also boosts their spirit for future projects. Not to mention the effect of a little thank-you email on their confidence.

Subject line: We did it!

Hi everyone!

The project we worked on for nights and days, paid off and happened to be chosen as the best innovation at the exhibition. Thank you for each and everyone’s dedication and effort and thanks for having this wonderful team.

To show my gratitude, I am planning a dinner this week!

Sincerely,

Mike Picherchmey

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There are thousands of other occasions we can mention and bring you some examples for you in case you had to write a thank you email. Still, since it is going to make this article really long. I know that people don’t really like to read long articles (probably that is why there is a LinkedIn character limit for the posts and articles) I am not going to give you more examples, except over one very important situation. The after-interview thank-you email.

Interview thank you email subject line

This thank-you email is so important that we decided to have a separate subtitle for it. Finding a job is so important in human society that we now have a social platform that is specialized in this matter, called LinkedIn. There are thousands if not millions of employers and recruiters on LinkedIn who talk to many job seekers every day, and you may think, all right, so why is it important that I send thank you emails post-interview or not? It is so important because of what we just said. They talk to many people every day, and a thank you email can make them think about you and consider you for a position they have available or might have available in the future. It is such a simple thing but it is a strategy for finding a decent job. All right, so they receive so many thank-you emails every day in their email inbox, how should we make them notice ours? That is by interview thank-you email subject line and then by knowing how to write a professional thank you email.

A good subject line can make people notice your email and make you stand out from the other interviewees. A subject line is what you type in the subject box of your after-interview thank you email, it includes some words and informs the recipient about the email body. Why is it important?

There are several reasons for that. First of all, it is the first thing the interviewer will see in your thank you email and it reminds them of you, especially if you had a good interview.

Even if they are so busy at the moment that they cannot read your email right away, your name will be engraved in their memory.

A thank you email can make them differentiate you from others and it will inspire them to continue their job. An on-time thank you email, also can help you to build a good relationship with LinkedIn recruiters, it really doesn’t matter if you could get that desired job or not and how often do recruiters reach out on LinkedIn.

A good relationship with some of them is strongly suggested for getting successful on LinkedIn because they can help you find a perfect job.

Now that this email is so important, people might ask what to include in the subject line of a post-interview email. I made a list of the items I always include in my post-interview emails to the employers.

• The first and the last name: as I mentioned, they received many emails and it is very important to introduce yourself in your email
• The position you applied for: many of these people are from the company’s HR department or they work as a recruiter and that means they are looking for employees for many job vacancies at the same time. So including a job title is very important.
• Date of the interview: add a date to your subject line to help them remember you better and easier
• Relevant details: mention some details you believe can have a positive effect on them.
• Thank you: mention that this is a thank you letter.

There are some things you also need to bear in your mind while writing an after-interview subject line for your thank you email. There is this triangle you need to consider:

Be punctual: send this thank you emails as soon as possible

Be positive: use positive words in your subject line

Be polite: have a friendly yet very respectful tone and avoid being sarcastic, humorous, and/or too informal.

Here are some suggestions you can use:

• Great meeting you on 17^th June, and thank you: Jessy Wilson
• Thanks for the front-end development interview: Mike Johnson
• Thanks for the wonderful chat I the photographer interview session: Sally McGuire
• I was thinking about your insights on social media regulations
• Hope Smith: Thank you for the interview. Any feedback for me?
• Thanks from Sara Redwood! Should I send you more details?
• Thanks for the interview. Let me know if you needed any more details: Michael Ross

How to collect email addresses for different purposes?

So, we now know that it is very important to send thank you emails in different situations, and there will be a problem. How should you find different people’s email addresses? Especially if you are a marketing specialist and you tagged your LinkedIn company page on your company website.

People visit your website and some of them might ask about your products and services, some of them might get convinced to buy from you, some might be doubtful, and some might politely say that they changed their mind about using your product.

As a marketer, you are to send emails, InMails, etc. to these people and thank them for deciding to use or even consider using your product.

Let me tell you something, you cannot collect people’s emails from LinkedIn.

It is highly rare to find people’s emails on LinkedIn and it is a very long process to complete a CRM manually. Some people might say: “All right, it is always said that the success of LinkedIn marketing is to expand your first-degree connections and then we can ask for their emails and we can then send them the emails we are to send.

First of all, if you are in the marketing section and are thinking like this, I believe you should think about changing your field of work.

A marketing expert will have thousands of people in their network and there is a connection Limit on LinkedIn which is 30,000 connections.

So you need another service to collect the email addresses. There are so many email finding services on the internet.

You can complete your CRM and have a collection of emails to do marketing and thank them for considering your services and products.

Not only can you find the email addresses of your first-degree connections, you can also have access to email addresses of those who are your second-degree connections, third-degree connections and even those who are out of your network.

CUF is one of the most credible email finder services. As you can see in the website the first paragraph is “Give CUF the list of your companies’ names or domains or emails.

In a second, you will see the companies’ websites, emails, phone numbers, LinkedIn profiles, and other social media profiles.”

It is fast, has this huge 250 companies’ information and more than 130 million individuals’ data in its database and the data accuracy is more than 98%. This is what we call a professional email-finding service. CUF converts:

• Company’s email to the company’s website, phone number, and social media profiles.
• Company’s domain to company’s email, phone number, and social media profiles.
• Company’s email to the company’s website, phone number, and social media profiles.

We provide so many different services in CUF website:

Service	Definition
Name to email	Find emails from company names
Emails to names	Find company names from email domain
Email verifier	Verify the list of your emails in bulk for free
Data enrich platform	Get companies’ emails, domains, etc in a wink.
Name to Employees’ LinkedIn	The main profiles of companies’ LinkedIn and the profile of all their employees can be provided by CUF for InMail marketing.
Name to LinkedIn	Find company’s LinkedIn URL to collect emails indirectly

I tried to introduce you to the best and most related CUF services for cold email marketing. So if you are a marketing staff and you have customers’ names which you want to find their email addresses for different purposes like sending professional thank you emails or send them more details about you products, use our services.

It is suggested to cite your LinkedIn company page on your Facebook, for the sake of attracting people to see it on LinkedIn. But it is better to link a post where you want people to get more engaged to it and don’t forget to tag your sales managers, marketers, etc. in that very post for people to be able to contact them easily.

Related Questions & Answers

Professional thank you message for appreciation

I wanted to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude for your appreciation. Your recognition of my efforts is truly humbling and greatly appreciated. It is through your encouragement and support that I am able to thrive and excel in my role.

I want to extend my heartfelt thanks for acknowledging the hard work and dedication I put into my work. Your words of appreciation have not only brightened my day but also motivated me to continue striving for excellence. It is an honor to be a part of a team/organization that values and recognizes the contributions of its members.

Once again, thank you for your kind appreciation. Your words have made a significant impact on me, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to work with such wonderful individuals like yourself.

How to say thank you in email after receiving documents

Dear [Sender’s Name],

I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to express my sincere gratitude for sending the documents I requested. I greatly appreciate your prompt response and the effort you put into gathering and sharing the necessary information.

I wanted to let you know that the documents have been received successfully. They will be instrumental in helping me with [mention the purpose or project]. Your support and timely assistance have made the process much smoother for me.

Once again, thank you for your prompt action and for providing the requested documents. Your professionalism and attention to detail are truly commendable. If there is anything else you need from my end, please do not hesitate to reach out. I look forward to our continued collaboration.

Best regards, [Your Name]

Conclusion

I covered some important titles about thank you emails in this article. I told you what a thank you email is, what should be the subject line for thank you emails, how to write a professional thank you email: formal and informal, I brought some examples for thank emails in different situations and then I talked a bit about after interview emails and how you can find people’s email addresses.

People like to be appreciated for their efforts, favors, and many other things. They even like to receive a note or an email that thanks them for purchasing something.

It is considered rude, not to say thank you to anyone who did anything positive for us in human society. We say thank you to people who bring us a glass of water to people who saved our lives, and that is called being a human.

But sometimes, the purpose is not just being polite, sometimes it is to engrave our name in people’s memories.

That is why we learn how to write a professional thank you email for our friends, acquaintances, strangers, colleagues and bosses, clients, employers, family members, etc. Receiving a thank you email from you after they helped you in something at some point in your life, not only makes them feel good about themselves but it also make them remember you as an appreciative person and they will get persuaded to help you in future again (if it is possible) or if they are your client, they will purchase from your company the next time they need similar services and products (if they are good enough).

So, write a professional thank you email to whoever helped you in any situation, from taking care of your pet, to people who considered employing you. Let them know that you appreciate their help and you are ready to return their favor if possible. Don’t wait long before you send that email, the more you wait the longer the email should be and the effect will also decrease over time.

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