Writing a meeting recap email after a meeting is a crucial consideration to enhance collaboration and boost productivity.
Regardless of the nature of the meeting, it is easy for some vital information to be forgotten or, perhaps, not fully understood by the participants. However, by sending out a quick summary of the key discussion points after the meeting, everyone becomes well-aligned.
But what exactly do you need to do to ensure the effectiveness of these meeting recaps? Why should you even send them out anyway?
This post comprehensively covers this topic by highlighting:
- What meeting recap emails are and why they are important;
- Step-by-step guide on how to write a meeting summary email;
- Fast and efficient ways to curate effective meeting summaries.
What is a Meeting Recap Email?
A meeting recap email is a message that consists of a concise summary of the key discussions and decisions made during a meeting. This message is sent to participants and relevant stakeholders as a basic reminder to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Moreover, it ensures that every relevant stakeholder has a clear understanding of the meeting outcomes, making it easier for follow-up discussions.
Why Should You Send a Meeting Recap Email?
It is advisable to send out meeting recap emails promptly at the end of an important meeting. But why exactly should you do that?
Here are a few benefits of writing a meeting recap email:
To promote clarity and understanding
A meeting recap email consolidates and clarifies key points of discussions and decisions made during the meeting.
By summarizing these topics, decisions, and action items, all the relevant stakeholders and participants can review and reaffirm their understanding of the meeting objectives and outcomes.
Moreover, these emails ensure everyone is on the same page and minimizes misunderstandings.
Reinforces accountability
During meetings, decisions made often include action items and deadlines. Documenting these details and sharing them with the team members creates a sense of accountability.
People are often more likely to follow through on their commitments if there’s a written reminder of what is expected of them.
Facilitates remote collaboration
Meeting recap emails act as a centralized source of information that ensures that remote teams remain connected and have access to the relevant details.
Today’s virtual work environment comes with various challenges, including having remote teams well-aligned. However, by sending out meeting recap emails, you can keep everyone focused on achieving their mandate in a more collaborative manner.
Enhances memory retention
We all have different levels of information retention. By writing a meeting recap email, you ensure that you combat the loss of crucial information by providing a written reference to the participants.
Moreover, in this current work landscape where virtual meeting fatigue is a thing, you wouldn’t want to risk having team members forgetting crucial details, as this can only hurt your overall productivity and lower the effectiveness of your meetings.
Encourages follow-ups and enhanced collaboration
A meeting recap email often includes important details, such as action items, next steps, deadlines, and responsibilities.
Having this information in your meeting recap emails ensures that team members can effectively engage in follow-up activities. Moreover, these emails act as a reference during catch-up meetings, leading to a smoother workflow.
Key Components to Include in a Meeting Recap Email
When you learn how to write a virtual meeting summary email, you’ll notice that the shorter and more direct to the point it is, the more effective it becomes.
A meeting recap email should be concise without many details, as this would be better added to your meeting minutes. This means only crucial information can be sent out in these emails. So, what exactly goes into a recap email?
Some of the key components to include in a meeting recap email are:
- The meeting details;
- Key discussion points;
- The main decisions made;
- Action items and the people responsible for accomplishing them;
- Deadlines and timelines.
Although the needs of each meeting differ, these five components are crucial for the effectiveness of any meeting recap email.
Tips for Writing Effective Virtual Meeting Recap Emails
You now understand why it is crucial to send out meeting summary emails at the end of your important meetings. If you want to know how to send a meeting summary email to make it effective, improve clarity, and foster the spirit of accountability, check out these expert-approved tips:
Take effective meeting notes
To ensure that all the important details are captured in the recap email sent to the participants and other relevant stakeholders, it is crucial to effectively capture the important details during the discussions.
By actively listening and taking notes during the meeting, you can recall every crucial detail.
If you do not have a dedicated person to take notes, you can always rely on a good AI note-taker. This is because, as well know, it is very easy to lose concentration even for a few seconds, meaning crucial details can easily slip our minds.
Begin with a clear subject line
Most people receive lots of emails, which they sometimes ignore or probably choose a different time to check out. This means it is important to use a subject line that clearly indicates what the email is all about, prompting the recipient to click on it.
You can use subject lines like “Meeting Summary,” where you can customize, and include the details of the meeting, ensuring that anyone that receives the email can easily tell what it is all about.
Focus on key discussion points
Your email should only identify and focus on the main topics and key discussion points from the meeting. When writing a virtual meeting summary email, always aim for brevity and clarity.
Condense the information and highlight only the important details. This is also one of the reasons having an effective meeting agenda helps, as you can easily use it to determine the important discussion points.
A bonus tip is to avoid lengthy paragraphs and use bullet points or subheadings, making the summary easier to read and understand.
Include action items and decisions
To make your meeting summary email more effective, include any relevant action items and decisions made during the meeting. This ensures all participants are well-aligned and fully aware of their roles and responsibilities, boosting overall productivity.
Highlight important deadlines
Besides mentioning the action items and assigning responsibilities in the summary email, it is also important to include important deadlines. Highlighting these deadlines makes everyone accountable and makes it easy to do follow-ups.
Proofread and edit
A single grammatical or typing error can easily negative the value of your summary emails. Ensure that, before hitting the send button, you have comprehensively proofread the email. Besides, this also reflects your professionalism and attention to detail.
Send the recap email promptly
It is a best practice to send the email promptly when the discussions are still fresh. This ensures that participants can be well-aligned and start planning themselves better if they have any follow-up responsibilities.
It can be quite overwhelming to put together the summary and have it sent out almost immediately after the meeting.
However, using a tool like Krisp’s AI Meeting Assistant can take the load off your back, as you can easily set up an automation that makes it possible to send out meeting summary emails without a hassle.
Templates of a Virtual Meeting Summary Email
There are many types of virtual meeting summary emails that you can write. This is because each meeting is different from another, including the main objectives.
However, in general, there are two key types of meeting summary emails that you can follow when sending out meeting takeaways:
- Basic meeting summary: A basic meeting summary only provides a brief overview of the meeting, including the main discussion points, decisions made, and action items assigned. It focuses on capturing the essential information for reference and follow-up.
- Detailed meeting summary: A detailed summary goes beyond the basics and includes a more comprehensive account of the meeting. It may include additional context, supporting details, and specific quotes or statements made during the discussion.
Here are two templates that you can build up depending on your specific meeting summary needs:
Basic meeting summary email template
Subject: [Name of the meeting] Summary
Dear [You can personalize the salutation],
I hope this email finds you well. Thank you for attending today’s meeting on [Objective or agenda]. Here’s a brief summary of the key points discussed:
Main discussions:
- Discussion point 1
- Discussion point 2
Decisions Made:
- Decision 1
- Decision 2
Action Items:
- Action Item 1 assigned to…
- Action Item 2 assigned to…
Please let me know if you have any questions or need further clarification.
Best regards,
[Your Name]
Detailed meeting summary email template
Subject: [Name of the meeting] Meeting Summary Held on [Date]
Dear [You can personalize the salutation],
I hope this email finds you well. Thank you for your active participation in today’s meeting on [objective of the meeting]. Below is a detailed summary of the key discussion points:
Discussion Points:
- Discussion point 1, including supporting details and relevant quotes.
- Discussion point 2
Decisions Made:
- Decision 1: [You may provide the rationale or context behind this decision]
- Decision 2:
Action Items:
- Action Item 1: [Mention who the action item is assigned to and the deadline]
- Action Item 2:
Attachments: [Attach any relevant documents necessary for effective communication, better understanding, or for follow-up purposes]
Please reach out if you need any further information or have any questions.
Thank you and best regards,
[Your Name]
Boost Efficiency with Krisp: Simplify Your Meeting Recaps
Writing meeting recaps is a vital task that ensures clarity and accountability among team members.
However, it can be quite overwhelming actively engage in the discussions and note down meeting summaries. To improve your efficiency and simplify your meeting recaps, you can consider Krisp’s AI-powered meeting assistant.
Krisp’s AI Meeting Assistant acts as a silent participant, listening in and transcribing your online meetings seamlessly and non-intrusively. It provides you with a detailed transcript of everything said during the meeting. However, Krisp doesn’t stop at meeting transcription. It leverages advanced AI capabilities to go further and generate concise summaries of the key discussion points, decisions, and action items.
With Krisp, you can quickly edit or tweak the generated summary before scheduling it to be sent out automatically to selected meeting participants. This automation ensures that your team stays informed and aligned without requiring extra effort from you.
Unlock the power of AI to transform your meeting recaps and elevate your productivity to new heights by trying out Krisp for free today! Enhance your meeting recaps with Krisp.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why should I send a virtual meeting summary email?
Sending a virtual meeting summary email ensures that all participants clearly understand the meeting outcomes, decisions, and action items. It also promotes accountability and enhances communication and collaboration.
What should I include in a virtual meeting summary email?
A virtual meeting summary email includes crucial discussion points, decisions made, and action items.
How soon after the meeting should I send the summary email?
It is recommended to send out a meeting summary email almost immediately after the meeting when the discussions are still fresh.
