How To End An Email: Best Email Sign Offs

In this article, we are talking about how to end an email with professional email closing lines. We will also go through how the Clean Email solution can help declutter your mailbox and achieve Inbox Zero.

Why Is a Professional Email Sign-Off Important?

There isn’t much point in crafting your greeting, first line, and the whole body of your message If you're going to sign it off badly.

It leaves a bad first impression and seems quite rude. You wouldn’t just bluntly end a conversation in real life, so don’t do it via email either.

Business email sign-offs should make the reader want to connect with you or complete the call to action. To ensure they do this, your last line needs to motivate a positive response.

Overall, your email closing lines need to be friendly and polite and show a clear call-to-action to remove any confusion about the next steps.

With a perfectly crafted professional email sign-off, your audience will think highly of you and respond to your message. Without it, they may not even read the whole thing.

Keep reading this article to learn how to end an email professionally.

Best Ways to End an Email

When sending a message, whether it's formal or informal, you need to think about a few things.

Is this message going to be giving your first impression? If so, think about how you should end the email to ensure a positive response. Or is this message being sent to a colleague or even a professional you have already had previous contact with, and built some rapport with?

Be sure to do these five things when closing your message.

  1. Craft a clever closing line.
    When writing your closing line, think about how to portray gratitude, positivity, and motivation. You need your reader to proceed with your call-to-action. To do this you need to motivate a response with a clever closing line. Your closing line can even assume or anticipate an answer, for example, “looking forward to hearing from you.”
  2. Use an appropriate email sign-off.
    Always end the email with the right sign-off. This means using “kind regards/best/thanks.” Without the right sign-off, the message seems incomplete.
  3. Always include your full name.
    The reader needs to know who you are to avoid confusion when communicating with other members of your team. You can be easily found and referred by your reader when including your full name to finish an email.
  4. Share your professional title.
    Always include a little about your job role, it doesn’t need to be in-depth, but it gives the reader more idea of who you are and what you know. For example, “head of sales”.
  5. Other forms of contact.
    Although the reader has your mail address from the initial message, it’s a good idea to provide other forms of contact. This can be a phone number, social media, or even the head office mail address.

Best Email Closing Lines

How to end an email using common sign-offs.

How to End a Formal Email

Ending a formal email will use the same framework as stated above, however you may need to think about a few extra points.

How to professionally end an email:

Read more about how to write a professional email and what the best tips for effective email communication are.

Best Business Email Sign Offs

How to end a business email with formal sign-offs.

How to End an Email if You Want a Response

You can craft your closing line to pre-empt a response from your reader. You want a response if your message includes a call-to-action or needs an answer to a question.

Here’s how to end an email professionally, for a response.

What to Avoid in Email Closing Lines

There are always things you need to avoid when closing your messages:

Read more about email etiquette rules and common email mistakes.

Create the Perfect Mailbox with Clean Email

Writing professional emails and waiting for a response can seem quite daunting. To be best prepared, make sure your mailbox is perfectly decluttered and ready to receive more important emails!

While Clean Email is not a mail client and can’t help you write and send emails, it is a great inbox management tool to help boost email productivity and keep your inbox organised.

Clean up your inbox with Clean EmailClean up your inbox with Clean Email

You can carry out tons of tasks with the Clean Email solution, this includes unsubscribing, blocking unwanted senders, creating automated rules, and more.

The Auto Clean feature allows you to create automated rules to manage your emails once they hit your inbox. Simply click the Auto Clean icon on the left-side panel. Then click Create New Rule and fill in your specific criteria.

Automatically block incoming emails with Clean EmailAutomatically block incoming emails with Clean Email

You can also use Sender Settings to perform other automated tasks depending on the sender. For example, send all their incoming mail to the Trash folder.

With Unsubscriber, you can decide to keep or remove the subscriptions and marketing newsletters you get. You can also send them to the Read Later folder to review them later.

Unsubscribe from emails with Clean EmailUnsubscribe from emails with Clean Email

Senders with the same unsubscribe link are grouped, making it easy to remove yourself from lots of subscriptions in one go! Or you can select multiple newsletters and choose an action for them all.

Cleaning Suggestions will suggest cleaning methods for you. This is based on your frequently cleaned emails, and other users’ commonly used actions with their emails. All you need to do is click on a suggestion and perform an action, like moving to Trash, for those messages.

In Smart Folders, all similar emails are grouped into their own folders, making it easier to find and organise your messages. For example, all social media related emails are in one place, and so are all finance-related emails, etc.

Smart Views feature in Clean EmailSmart Views feature in Clean Email

Clean Email will never keep, sell, or share your data. The only data we use is for the features of the application to work. We care about your privacy and security a whole lot!

Wondering to learn more etiquette tricks? Check out our guides on how to start an email and how to use professional email templates.


How To End an Email - FAQs

What is a good ending sentence for an email?

Keep your email sign-off concise and motivating. For example, use ‘Kind regards’, or ‘Thanks in advance’. Always be friendly to set a good first impression!

How do you end a professional formal email?

To end a professional and formal email, use a sign-off like ‘Sincerely’, or just ‘Thank you’! Don’t use any slang or abbreviated words.

What is a closing salutation?

A closing salutation is simply the closing line of your message.

How do you end a letter waiting for a response?

To anticipate a response, use a closing like ‘Thanks in advance’. This shows the reader you are expecting them to reply.

How do you end an email if you don't want a response?

You still need to end your emails politely, and you cannot say you don’t want a response, without saying do not respond to this message. End with ‘Best wishes’ to show your communication may be finished.

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