21–30 of 78 posts
2. Schedule the delivery for first thing in the morning. Email delivered during the day, after people get busy, just scrolls off the front page and gets lost. (I use Gmail's new scheduled send multiple times a day now.)
Sometimes it's a technical problem. Right now, for some reason, I can't get transactional emails from Doordash, Fastrak, or EZFacility. If I ask any of those sites for a password reset, the email never shows up. I had to drop Doordash and switch to Grubhub. My email goes to my web site, hosted by HostGator. There's no filtering there; it's just forwarded to my ISP, into an IMAP box. There's spam filtering at that poi…
Interestingly, we just discovered a sendgrid problem today. Messages sent via our web form never arrive. Wonder if this is related? If you have any details of your experience that I can share with sendgrid, hit me at this username at gmail. I'll likely be talking with them soon...
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Unless I've very strong incentives to answer, I usually put people who dare sending me an email with only “Hello?” or “ping” in it in my “least urgency queue”, if not directly in my spam folder.
If you had good reasons to ignore their previous emails you should let them know.
I have a second profile that only gets shared with actual people that I have actual relationships with.
I would say about the only way to get past that filter is via some kind of content marketing that gets shared by folks or an actual direct person to person introduction.
I've found a couple things to be useful: * If there's a question for the person to answer, make sure it is the very last sentence in the email. That way when the person finishes reading the email and is deciding whether to ignore/archive or reply, they're more likely to reply. If possible, make the question yes/no instead of long answer. For example: "Is now a good time to move forward?" versus "How does this sound t…
This sounds rude to me, IMO. It's like a thinly veiled ultimatum–I find it interesting that you've gotten success from this, since it feels antagonistic to me.
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I have an address on "cs.stanford.edu", from decades ago. I'm surprised that it's still turned on. Probably dates from when I was a visiting scholar in the 1990s and CS was a much smaller department.
My university cut access to my email account the second I graduated. Which I thought was pretty ridiculous considering 4 years of correspondence I had on it.
I've found a couple things to be useful: * If there's a question for the person to answer, make sure it is the very last sentence in the email. That way when the person finishes reading the email and is deciding whether to ignore/archive or reply, they're more likely to reply. If possible, make the question yes/no instead of long answer. For example: "Is now a good time to move forward?" versus "How does this sound t…
> I wanted to follow up with you on this one last time This sounds rude to me, IMO. It's like a thinly veiled ultimatum–I find it interesting that you've gotten success from this, since it feels antagonistic to me.
I encounter this frequently at work, where people either care deeply that they be heard, or do not — but regardless are unreliable at replying when asked to be heard the first time. Including “here’s my next course of action if non-reply” permits them to remain silently without being rude if they wish to.
I've found a couple things to be useful: * If there's a question for the person to answer, make sure it is the very last sentence in the email. That way when the person finishes reading the email and is deciding whether to ignore/archive or reply, they're more likely to reply. If possible, make the question yes/no instead of long answer. For example: "Is now a good time to move forward?" versus "How does this sound t…
* If it's a cold call, start by introducing yourself: "Hi, my name is so-and-so. I am a [brief description of you, e.g. "student at X university", "resident of...", "software engineer working at..."]. I found you via ... I read your paper on ... and I had a question: or something like that. Never say, "I wonder if you could spare some time to answer a question?" Just ask it. If they can spare the time they'll answer,…
It’s a support channel, just ask.
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* If it's a cold call, start by introducing yourself: "Hi, my name is so-and-so. I am a [brief description of you, e.g. "student at X university", "resident of...", "software engineer working at..."]. I found you via ... I read your paper on ... and I had a question: or something like that. Never say, "I wonder if you could spare some time to answer a question?" Just ask it. If they can spare the time they'll answer,…
On that topic people who go onto support channels on IRC and then ask if it’s ok to ask a question drive me crazy. It’s a support channel, just ask.
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On your last point, you might be interested in reading Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It . The author would advise you to ask a negative question in your email such as "have you given up on this project?" People don't like to say no and it often motivates a reply. https://blog.blackswanltd.com/the-edge/3-ways-to-make-no-wor...
Depends on the person. We're not all sheep, and I'd see through that and think "Fuck You". I might right click the email and select "create filter out of this..." The problem with any systematic of getting someone's attention is that is is impersonal by nature (not tailored to the person). As audiences get more sophisticated and used to technology, the sender needs to get more sophisticated. In the early days of inte…
> "CEO of ... a firm that solves business negotiation problems with hostage negotiation strategies".