Home Meeting Planner Resources The 10 Top (and Tired) Email Buzzwords

The 10 Top (and Tired) Email Buzzwords

November 14, 2025

Imagine an email that grabs the receiver’s attention immediately. Let’s face it—certain hackneyed phrases in your emails might be causing people’s eyes to glaze over. Or worse, preventing the information from registering. And AI isn’t helping.

We mock the buzzwords and cliches but use them anyway. After analyzing over a million emails, the email deliverability platform ZeroBounce identified the most overused business email buzzwords.

Your inbox likely harbors corporate cliches like “hope this finds you well” or “just checking in.” This isn’t about shaming anyone—let’s face it, we’re all guilty—just an honest look at the formulaic language dominating professional communication.

The ZeroBounce study notes that about 25 percent of career professionals today use AI to write or edit their emails, which also hasn’t helped the buzzword issue.

The Top 10 Email Buzzwords

“Reaching out” leads the pack—with 6,117 appearances (0.61% of all emails), it’s the reigning champ of corporate jargon. Next up: follow-ups of all kinds (“to follow up,” “following up,” “will follow up”) with 5,755 mentions (0.57%), and “check in” variants with 4,286 mentions (0.43%).

With buzzwords showing up in nearly 25,000 emails out of those analyzed, following are ZeroBounce’s rankings:

Reaching out – 6,117 emails (0.61%)
Follow up (all variations) – 5,755 emails (0.57%)
Check in (all variations) – 4,286 emails (0.43%)
Aligned (all variations) – 1,714 emails (0.17%)
Please advise – 1,459 emails (0.15%)
Hope you’re doing well – 1,300 emails (0.13%)
Hope this email finds you well – 974 emails (0.10%)
Hope all is well – 592 emails (0.06%)
E-meet – 536 emails (0.05%)
Circle back (all variations)– 533 emails (0.05%)

And here are some honorable mentions:

Happy Friday – 512 emails (0.05%)
Touch base (all variations) – 331 emails (0.03%)
Hop on a call – 243 emails (0.02%)
Bandwidth – 220 emails (0.02%)
Happy Monday – 169 emails (0.02%)
Per my last email – 89 emails (0.009%)
Low-hanging fruit – 18 emails (0.002%)

So what’s wrong with using some of these, you may ask? Nothing wrong, per se. It’s just that some of these have become “white noise” in the din of corporate communication. They can sound like filler instead of substance. They’ve lost, if not their meaning, then their sense of urgency. Kind of like asking someone, “How are you?” We know we’re going to get back: “Fine.” In fact, that’s probably what we want to hear.

The Buzz on Effective Communication

ZeroBounce analyzed the top business cliches to find the subtext and found that:

Reaching out really means “I need something.”
Please advise is shorthand for “This is now your problem” or “Decide already!”
Circle Back = “We’re stuck in a loop.”
Per my last email means “You missed something.”
Synergy (see also align) means “Let’s act like we’re working together.”

Instead of circling back to some of these boomerang phrases, ZeroBounce has suggested some alternatives:

Hope this finds you well → be human: “How’s your week going?” / “Good morning — quick one:”
Reaching out → be direct: “Writing to ask…” / “Quick question about…”
Just checking in or following up → say what you want: “What are your thoughts on the proposal?”
Circle back / Touch base → put a date or action on it: “Let’s revisit this on [date]” / “Can we spend 10 min on this?”
Please advise → be more specific: “Could you share next steps?” / “Which option do you recommend?”
Aligned / alignment → confirm agreement explicitly: “Do we agree on X?” / “Here’s what we’re planning—anything to change?”