How to End an Email Professionally (Complete Guide with Examples)

This guide is part of our broader coverage of client communication for Virtual Assistants and Executive Assistants.

Why the sign-off matters more than most VAs and EAs think

The last line of an email is the third-most-remembered part of the whole message. First is the opener. Second is the ask. Third is the sign-off. Everything in the middle blurs together for most readers.

That order is why a good ask can be undermined by a lazy sign-off, and why a well-chosen sign-off can quietly warm up a cold email. It is also why VAs and EAs replying on behalf of a client need to know the client's sign-off default cold, because getting it wrong is one of the fastest ways for the recipient to notice the reply did not come from the client directly.

The 20 sign-offs worth knowing

Grouped by situation. Not all of these fit every voice. Pick two or three that fit your client's tone and stick to them.

Neutral professional default

• Best,
• Best regards,
• Kind regards,
• All the best,

Best is the safest single-word sign-off across almost any professional context in 2026. Kind regards and Best regards are slightly more formal and work well with senior stakeholders or first emails to strangers. All the best has a slightly warmer edge, still safe.

When there is an ask or a favor

• Thanks,
• Thanks so much,
• Thanks in advance,
• Appreciate it,

Thanks in advance is contentious. Some readers love it. Others find it presumptuous. Use it with warm relationships, not with strangers. Appreciate it is looser and reads as sincere in most contexts.

With peers and warm relationships

• Cheers,
• Talk soon,
• Speak soon,
• Catch up soon,

Cheers is warm and short. It reads better with peers than with senior stakeholders. Talk soon and Speak soon fit when a follow-up conversation is genuinely planned. Do not use if the plan is vague.

Formal, first outreach, or high-stakes

• Sincerely,
• Yours sincerely,
• Respectfully,
• With appreciation,

Sincerely fits legal, financial, and first outreach to unknown senior stakeholders. Respectfully signals deference and works well in academic or government correspondence. With appreciation fits when the recipient has already done something for you.

Client-facing warmth (use sparingly)

• Warmly,
• Warm regards,
• With warm regards,
• All my best,

These work in service industries, coaching, and client-support contexts. Do not use them with strangers, senior executives, or in first outreach. They read as familiar. Familiar unearned can read as unprofessional.

The sign-offs to avoid

Some sign-offs land worse than nothing at all.

Regards, on its own has aged badly. It reads cold and slightly stiff to modern readers under 45. Kind regards or Best regards work better if you want the formal register.

Yours truly, is out of place in most modern business contexts. It reads as either too formal (legal correspondence) or too intimate (personal notes). If either fits, use Yours sincerely or Warmly instead.

Take care, can read either sincere or dismissive depending on context. In a customer service reply to a complaint, it reads sincere. At the end of a normal work email, it can read as brushing the recipient off. Skip unless you know the relationship.

Ciao, and other non-English sign-offs land as affectation in most English-language business contexts. Avoid unless the client actually speaks Italian and it is their genuine default.

No sign-off at all in a first email or formal context reads as either rushed or rude. Fine in ongoing internal threads, not fine anywhere else.

Matching the sign-off to the recipient

The sign-off has to match two things at once: the tone of the specific email, and the relationship with the specific recipient. Most VA-drafted emails fail at the second.

A good check: read the last email the recipient sent to your client. What sign-off did they use? Match the register one step below if you are asking for something, one step above if you are being asked. If they wrote Best, you write Best or Thanks. If they wrote Sincerely, you write Best regards or Sincerely.

Two lines that work every time under the sign-off

Below the sign-off, most VAs and EAs default to just the first name. That works for warm relationships. For everything else, add a line under the name.

• If external: name, then optionally role or company or one link (calendar, work, or the site)
• If internal: name is enough

Compact example:

Best,

Sarah
Executive Assistant to [Client Name]
sarah@[client].com

Do not stack the sign-off with quotes, animated GIFs, banner ads, or ten social media icons. Each addition dilutes the signal from your name.

How to make it easy on yourself as a VA

Store each client's default sign-off in your tone sheet (see the section on context-switching between clients in our task management guide for the full sheet format). Copy-paste from the sheet until the sign-off lives in your head for that client. Update quarterly, because senior stakeholders sometimes shift register over time.

For VAs and EAs writing dozens of replies a day across four clients, tools like Replyf automatically apply each client's default sign-off based on which delegated account is active. That removes the last mental step in every reply.

The sign-off is small but not trivial

Most emails do not fail because of a bad sign-off. But a good sign-off compounds. Over 200 emails a month per client, the difference between a sign-off that fits and one that does not shapes how the recipient feels about the client without them noticing why.

For related guidance, see Email Etiquette at Work and How to Write a Thank You Email.

Sign-offs across timezones and cultural contexts

The default sign-offs above work in US and UK professional English. Working across other regions requires small adjustments most VAs and EAs discover only after a client contact goes cold.

German and Dutch corporate contexts. "Mit freundlichen Grüßen" or "Kind regards" reads as standard. "Best" alone can read as clipped. Prefer "Best regards" or "Kind regards" when writing on behalf of executives dealing with German or Dutch counterparts.

Japanese business contexts. English sign-offs work when writing to Japanese teams that use English as a business language, but keep them formal. "Best regards" or "Sincerely" beats "Cheers" or "Thanks" in every case. Also: always spell the recipient's full name in the greeting, never abbreviate.

Middle East and India. "Regards" and "Best regards" are the safe defaults. "Warmly" can read as culturally off for corporate contexts.

The one universal rule: match the sign-off the client uses in their own writing to that contact. Read three past emails they sent to the same recipient before drafting a reply. What sign-off did they use? Use the same one. Consistency across a thread matters more than any general guideline.

Small tip most VAs and EAs discover in year two: keep a running document of every client's preferred sign-off, updated whenever you notice a shift. This document lives longer than any specific tool and moves with you across engagements.

For VAs and EAs supporting multiple executives at once, a shared spreadsheet with columns for greeting, sign-off, formality register, and forbidden phrases becomes the single most-referenced working doc in the entire client relationship. Update quarterly.