Writing effective emails seems pretty easy. But if you want your emails to perform even better, keep these science-backed rules in mind.
In the past, we've listed 12 Reasons People Keep Ignoring Your Emails 12 Reasons People STILL Ignore Your Emails 12 Reasons People Keep Ignoring Your Emails Do you often have a hard time getting people respond to your emails? We show you why people might ignore your emails and how to get them to notice and react to your message. Read more . We've even given you step-by-step instructions on how to get busy people to reply to your messages. 6 ways to keep people busy responding to your emails. 6 ways to get busy people to respond to your emails. this is an email that will either encourage or discourage a person from hitting the "reply" button and responding to you. Learn the rules of email success. Read more . But now it's time to share some more specific and practical advice, backed by data.
Each of these tips not only improves the chances that your emails will be read, but also that you will receive a positive response from those emails. This is important because email is still the main form of communication in the business world. Knowing how to craft effective emails gives you a definite advantage over your peers.
This sounds obvious, but if you really want people to pay attention to you when they get an email from you, use your name. And use it more than once..
Research published in 2006 showed that several brain regions "show increased activation to one's own name.", providing evidence that "hearing one's own name has a unique activation of brain function."
Using your recipient's name in the subject line of the email. and The body of the email is therefore a psychological trick that can attract attention. Closing with “Hope to hear from you soon, Stan” is much more effective than simply “Hope to hear from you soon”.
People are influenced by people they trust. If a manager advises you to contact the director of your company, name that manager in your introductory email. Cold mails are horrible to receive. Showing that you have the support of someone your recipient trusts is extremely important.
This is partly due to a theory called the halo effect . This is a type of confirmation bias. In this case, the bias would probably improve the director's overall impression of you simply because of your favorable impression of the manager who referred you.
However, you don't have to limit yourself to mentioning superiors. Tapping into the opinions and ideas of experts, clients, mutual friends, and crowds can also make your email stronger, provided the recipient values views from the people you refer .
When Boomerang , a leading Gmail app, analyzed their data, they found something incredibly interesting. “One of the most important factors in determining response rates is how positive (words like good) or negative (words like bad) the words in the message are.”
Both moderately positive and Negative emails received 5-15% more responses than neutral emails. That said, extremely hostile emails 10 Email Tips for Dealing With Angry, Trolling, or Rude Emails 10 Email Tips for Dealing With Angry, Trolling, or Rude Emails It's incredibly frustrating to check your email inbox just to find a totally hateful message. Why in the world do people act like this? With that said, you should learn to defend yourself while... Read More Overly flattering emails didn't perform any better, either. In other words, convey your feelings, but don't overreact.
I know I know There will be exceptions to this. One of my favorite brain sites Read More Smart Content In 2016 With These 35 Sites Read More Smart Content In 2016 With These 35 Sites We all need to read these 35 sites more often. If you're tired of stupid content, make things a little more thoughtful next year with this super list. Read More But overall, the data suggests you should avoid long emails.
In fact, along with that information about the types of words to use in your messages, Boomerang also found the “ideal” length of an email. Based on their analysis of 40 million emails, they found that those containing no more than 50-175 words had the highest probability of receiving a response (49-50%). This is also supported by the results of a 2010 MIT study.
This is wise advice, but it is not always practical. But the lesson is to keep your emails concise. One way to do this is to subscribe to the Five Sentences philosophy and never send emails longer than five sentences. As an investor and author, Guy Kawasaki told Entrepreneur.com, “less than five sentences is often abrupt and rude, more than five sentences is a waste of time.”
If you have the audacity to ask someone to do something for you, at least tell them why . We've known this since the 1970s, when Harvard University psychology professor Ellen Langer published a study highlighting the importance of the word. “because”.
Too often we get emails that just demand something (“Can you send me that report by 2pm??”), without explaining why. But by inserting the word “because” into our request (“Can you send me that report before 2 pm because it needs to be edited by 5 pm), the chances of compliance increase.
According to that study, this could be because “people adopt 'automatic' behavior ... as a form of heuristic or shortcut. And hearing the word 'because' followed by a reason (no matter how slim the reason), compels us to comply.”
The Paradox of Choice is where we have so many options that we become paralyzed. To make sure your emails don't result in a Paradox of Choice, try to offer no more than three choices.
The human mind loves the magic of all three. That's why we give out three medals at the Olympics. We analyze things in terms of optimistic, realistic, and pessimistic (or high, medium, and low). And that's why economic markets often mature to host only three major competitors.
In terms of decision making, we also like to rely on three reasons, or three options. This was demonstrated through research entitled When three charms but four alarms , Conducted by two behavioral scientists. Applied to email, if you're hosting a meeting or a call, try giving only three date and time options. Alternatively, you can use a meeting scheduling tool like Doodle, which we've reviewed Doodle takes the frustration out of scheduling meetings or events. it can be as frustrating and time-consuming as finding your lost children in a busy mall. The online survey web application,... Read More
The reading grade level of your emails can have a massive effect on your response rates. According to Boomerang, emails written at a college reading level had a response rate of just 39%. The most effective reading grade was third grade, which achieved a 53% response rate.
Reading level is primarily determined by looking at “number of syllables in your words and number of words in your sentences.” To improve your response rate, keep your sentences and words short. To check the readability score of your own emails, copy and paste them into tools like Readability-Score or Hemingway Editor.
For longer emails, it goes without saying, but for shorter emails, proofreading is often overlooked. This is a bad idea.
In a 2001 study, Larry Beason showed that writing errors (including spelling and grammatical errors, as well as logical errors) have several negative effects on the writer's perception.
When a reader notices an error, he automatically makes assumptions about the writer. In this study, the most common assumptions were that the writer was a faulty thinker, not a detailed person, a poor communicator, and/or poorly educated.
Here are some very harmful attributes that you can prevent from being seen, simply by fixing Grammarly Lite - A Browser Extension For All Your Proofreading Needs [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] Grammarly Lite - A Browser Extension For All Your Proofreading Needs [Chrome , Firefox , Safari] How do you currently correct what you type on your computer? Type it into Google? Paste it in the word? Or do you use a review website where you paste your text? I'm definitely... Read More
If numbers such as statistics, data, dates, time, etc. are important to your message, show them as numbers instead of writing them (12 instead of twelve).
Eye-tracking studies have shown that a reader's eyes generally scan the text, while "numerals often stop the wandering eye." This is because “numbers represent facts”. Numbers are hard data that the mind can pick through quickly. The reader's mind assumes that those numbers are an important part of the message.
Keep this in mind when creating your own emails. If numbers are an important part of your message, display them as numbers so your reader can filter what's important from what's not.
In most jobs, emails are a crucial part of how we communicate with our colleagues. Whether you send 10 or 100 emails a day, knowing how to craft effective messages is a skill you need to learn.
As you can see from above, this is not difficult. Small changes like making your emails more succinct, revising them, or changing the emotion of your writing can have a big impact. And with free email improvement tools 5 Tools That Can Help You Write Better Emails 5 Tools That Can Help You Write Better Emails Everyone is still trying to solve the email problem. So let's talk about the most basic habit of all:the art of writing better emails. With the help of some great tools. Read More
These possibilities can not only make your emails more likely to be noticed and responded to, but also help cultivate an enhanced professional image of yourself.
What changes have you made to the way you write emails that have improved their effectiveness? We'd love to hear!
