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Consumer Behavior
How You Can Get Anyone to Read—and Act on Your Emails
Six essentials every email should have.
Posted July 23, 2019
1. Start with the right subject line. One that tells your readers what they need to do after reading the email, not why you’re sending it.
Every writer of time-wasting, lousy emails makes the same cardinal error. They fail to consider their already-swamped readers: who’s going to read the email, under what conditions, and how little time they have to spend reading those Cover Your Ass emails we’re all far too familiar with. Most of us only bother to read emails based on (a) who sent them and (b) their subject lines. So a subject line that speaks directly to your reader’s interests ensures that they at least open the email, if not read it as lovingly as they might a missive from someone they actually care about.
Begin with an action, a need, or a benefit to your readers: Attend Workshops That Help Grow Your Client Base. If you’re actually asking someone to do something, add an object: Need Your Feedback on New Job Description. And, since so many people are prone to the planning fallacy, a deadline for action ensures that your readers open, read, and act on the email: Please RSVP for Canvas Training Sessions by Friday.
2. After a brief salutation, open with the benefits your readers will receive from following through on the action you’re about to request.
These benefits might accrue to the organization, their department or team, or just the individual: The latest version of Canvas gives you more granular control in handling your students’ test scores, enabling you to curve results, add points, or provide more time to students across course sections with only a few mouse clicks.
3. Follow with a brief rationale for the action your readers need to take, included in this first paragraph.
For example, you might say: Because this new version of Canvas introduces major changes to the platform, you’ll need to attend a brief training session to make your transition to the version as smooth as possible.
4. Connect the rationale to the request for action.
Say something like: We’re therefore offering one-hour training sessions during the week of August 12-16th. Please complete the Doodle poll, indicating your availability, no later than August 9th. Ensure that the action you’re requesting, along with a deadline, appear in the final sentences of the opening paragraph. These sentences occupy the emphasis position for the entire email, the sentences your readers will remember best and longest. Think of it as your email’s thesis, one that frames readers’ expectations for the content that follows it.
5. If your readers require more context, supply it in order of importance to them, not the organization, in the next paragraph.
Be sure, before you sign off, to emphasize benefits to your audience from complying with your request or participating in the activity you’re announcing.
6. Always include a salutation and a closing, even if you’re addressing someone you know well and communicate with frequently.
If you omit the salutation, you can seem rude, demanding, or just an ass—excepting responses to long email chains, involving multiple recipients confirming availability to have a group call or parceling out responsibility for tasks on a project. Consider a few actual email examples:
Example: Correct the errors for the entire training course. I’m sick of handling it.
Context: The sender was actually responsible for making the errors, not the recipient. The final it also fuzzes up the issue of whether the sender is sick of handling the errors or the course—or, from the sound of it, quite possibly life itself.
Example: It has come to my attention that some of you people don’t know exactly what a Marketing Rep is or what duties are included in the position of Marketing Rep and as to why it is necessary for us to hire any to begin with. A Marketing Rep’s primary job is to bring in clients. He/she then needs to keep said clients happy. If he/she is not keeping said clients happy, then said clients will no longer do business with us, and the Marketing Rep is not doing his/her job correctly. The question has been posed, “How do you get clients?” That’s the Marketing Rep's job and that’s what we hire them for. In the future please forward all questions of this and like nature to me, the Director of Marketing.
Context: Branch managers at a national bank needed to work with the new marketing representatives installed in the branches that had formerly been exclusively managers' fiefdoms. This email’s dripping sarcasm is guaranteed to piss off branch managers and sabotage the marketing rep’s efforts to work fruitfully with branches in securing new clients. Ever heard anybody use the expression you people positively? Nope.
Note that neither of these gems includes the softening salutation and closing, let alone the word please, a rationale, clear-cut action, or a deadline.
Sending a lousy email can lose your organization's good-will, as well as put a serious dent in your relationships with other employees or even close colleagues. In addition, you can earn a reputation for sending time-wasting emails or, worse, email that should’ve been helpful, but instead is so gnomic that your readers missed out on a valuable opportunity because they couldn’t understand what you were trying to communicate.
Note: If your email announces unexpected changes, controversial decisions, or anything negative, avoid the direct approach outlined in Essentials 2, 3, and 4. Instead, follow an indirect approach, one that ensures readers—at least, the ones who haven’t been laid off—finish reading the email motivated to comply with your request, rather than contemplating surfing Monster.com for jobs at other organizations. We’ll explore how you handle those ticking-bomb emails in the next post.
