How to Make Your Emails and Proposals More Readable (and More Effective)

HOW TO MAKE YOUR EMAILS AND PROPOSALS
MORE READABLE (AND MORE EFFECTIVE)

August 7, 2025

You’ve written a great proposal. The offering is competitive, the pricing is right, and you’ve even included some personalized details.

But here’s the catch: if your email or proposal is hard to read, it might never get read at all.

According to a study by the Nielsen Norman Group, readers only skim about 20% of text on an average web page. The same behavior applies to emails and sales proposals – especially when decision-makers are short on time.

So how do you make your content skimmable, scannable, and ultimately more successful? Improve clarity, increase response rates, and make a stronger impression with a few simple formatting tricks.

1. USE HEADINGS AND SUBHEADINGS

Clear section headers guide the reader through your content and make it easier to find what they’re looking for. Think of them as signposts:

“Event Details,” “Room Block,” “Summary of Costs” – these let your reader breathe and refocus.

Emails with clear headers and structured formatting have up to 58% higher engagement, according to Campaign Monitor.

2. KEEP PARAGRAPHS SHORT

Dense blocks of text are intimidating. Break long paragraphs into shorter ones, ideally 2 – 4 lines max.

Not sure if it’s too long? If it looks like a wall of text on your screen, it’s probably time to split it.

3. Use Bullet Points for Key Info

Lists help draw attention to the most important details. They’re also easier to scan quickly.

Key benefits
Dates and deadlines
What’s included
Calls-to-action

4. ADD WHITE SPACE

White space isn’t wasted space. It helps improve readability by up to 20%, according to the UX research firm Crazy Egg.

Give your content room to breathe – it increases comprehension and visual appeal.

5. Stay Consistent with Formatting

Bold headers, uniform fonts, aligned text – these things matter. They convey professionalism and structure, even subconsciously.

That’s where UpMail can help. Creating proposals from scratch every time makes it easy to slip into bad formatting habits.

UpMail gives hotel sales teams templated, on-brand, visual proposals – complete with pre-structured sections, bullet lists, white space, and calls-to-action.

Teams using UpMail report faster response times and more engagement with their proposals. Learn more.