Definitive Guide for Investor Updates

This might seem obvious, but I have a style of email for any kind of update where the recipient is not as day-to-day or emotionally involved as I am (investors, executive management, other business units, etc.)

Basically, you bullet out the key raw metrics and status items at the top, with as little narrative or opinion as possible. You assume that everyone who sees that email is only going to read those bullets, so it has to convey all of the core data.

Then, below that, you can do a longer narrative form with discussion and opinion and background, formatted to align with each bullet point. That's where you ask non-critical questions, explain why you think last quarter's growth was slightly off, or a project was delayed, etc.

I started doing this when I would get replies to long-form project updates that made it clear that the reader had missed the point, or not even read the email in its entirety. Bulleting up all of the data upfront helped prevent me from trying to excuse away mistakes, made the readers' lives easier, and allowed people to self-select if and when they wanted to get a fuller picture.

Maybe it sounds obvious and self-evident, and once I started doing it, it seemed like common sense, but I get tons of emails all the time that don't follow these kinds of guidelines and it is occasionally frustrating.