Get Your Email Answered

Great tips. I’ve personally written about this before. I swear, how to write an email needs to be taught in schools, but that’s another blog post.

Subject lines matter. If someone sends me an email with a direct, descriptive subject line, it makes things easier for me.

Include all necessary information-whenever I send an email I make sure I include any necessary links, attachments, etc. If I’m following up, I make sure to re-send all the information so the other person doesn’t have to go digging.

Include contact info-I always include as much contact info as possible. And I list it in the email. I don’t care if it’s in my email signature-I want to make it easy for the person to contact me in whatever they’re preferred medium is. Sometimes I feel silly listing 8 different ways to contact me, but you never know what someone else prefers and it seems to work.

Love It

would also add that if you email my assistant – please do NOT also cc: me and several members of my team. That does NOT increase your odds. Send to ONE member of the team (preferably the assistant and she/he can decide where it goes from there first.) For those of us that travel alot – that prevents the fw, cc, bcc madness amongst our staff ;)

Carrie

Very much agree. I’m a bullet point kind of girl when it comes to emails. When i get emails that are more than a paragraph long I’ve been known to “save them for later” and sometimes that “later” never comes.

This is a very good insight to how to handle all those email. I could (and have) literally spend hours just wading through them, not counting the time to respond to a few. Thanks Chris. Leah :)

I agree Chris. Too many people can waffle without getting to the point.
I also find the subject line is key to getting it opened.

You have the best tip there, and I can say from experience it’s 100% true – it’s how I got the chance to interview you and become the first advertiser on My Escape Velocity (which is awesome btw).

We all get a ton of email, and if your popular or in a corporate job your inundated. Much like blog posts, having a concise and to the point subject gets you the open, scannable body text gets it read, and a clear call to action gets a reply.

On the money Chris – Whether seeking new business or offering to help, it pays to be direct and to clearly suggest the next action.

I agree on the guilt thing too. When I ask for a response to let me know my message/content was received, I invariably get a prompt and favorable reply.

All of this comes down to how you do it – as you say, without the guilt. We all create enough of that on our own!

Jeff

Great post Chris! When you get a DM from someone it’s always right to the point. That’s great! Sometimes you can’t get out what you need to say in 140 letters, but you can always get to the point early in your email and then support it in the next *short* paragraph.

What caught my attention here is the “let me know if I can help” portion. I think we all want to be useful for folks when we can, but aren’t sure where we can dig in or the stuff we *can* do may not be what’s needed at the time. For example, with a recent family-related crisis, we all want to be helpful, but don’t know what this really means when we are living in different states. I know that personally if I do want help, I reach out to specific folks I know I can rely on, even if there’s plenty of others who might help if I could only ask.And sometimes, the time to find a portion of a task to farm out seems to be more work than doing it yourself.

I don’t know if you can keep a list of the offers, because this might just become a pool of folks to rely on in the future. Or do you think the offers are sort of those half-sincere statements, like “We’ll have to have lunch sometime” where the end point never seems to get scheduled or prioritized?

Great tips, Chris! I get a ton of email, but I cannot *even begin to imagine* how you respond to yours. I am genuinely surprised every time your respond to one of mine. :)

Totally agree with you on the “if I can help you in anyway, just let me know.” lines. Great sentiment, but impossible to respond to.

Make sure your subject line is succinct and eye-catching — start with Direct and Obvious there and tell me what you’re looking for without ambiguity (Catching Up probably moves you down the response list).

You talk about “one need, one subject, one topic.” Let me add One Target. If I see that I’m one of 5-10 people on the To: line or I’m one of countless peoiple on the CC: line, I’m much less likely to respond because I figure someone else will.

Great post, as always, and I’ll take this advice to heart.

Peter

I agree that short emails with a single request or question will get answered much faster than a multiple part long drawn out email. There are a few of those sitting in my in box right now :)

I work virtually as a contractor. I am usually one of many on a team.

Many of the men and women I am communicating with are business owners or entrepreneurs.

I am guilty of “If I can help you in any way, just let me know.”… and I do want a more effective response. What should I say if what I mean is… “you’re taking too long to do this thing and I don’t mind helping you get it done.” Or what if I am simply trying to communicate that I am a team player… sometimes I feel guilty for asking for stuff when clients or team members are so busy. But I need my stuff.

I don’t work with lazy people, so it is unlikely anyone is being a slacker. They will complete the task when they can… so maybe I just answered my own question. Any thoughts?

I am a huge fan of the single use email, it is the only way I can stay accountable and get things done. Great article!

I have spent a whole year learning about the value of follow up because not all people ignore you on purpose, most times they forget so I completely agree with the idea of sending an email without making people feel guilty.

I wonder how this would translate into a sales type of arena. Alot of marketing is done via email B2B. Would the same apply there as far as the single use email, bullet point approach? (Assuming it’s not dropped in the spam folder).