This applies to internal email as well, no on reads your essays. Keep it short, bullet points if possible, and don't request responses to more than one or two questions at a time.
Seriously though, no one reads your email.
To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017)
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Re: To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017)
#72This applies to internal emails, especially requests to management chain. Whenever possible, aim to keep emails to two lines/sentences max, and put the request always first.
Re: To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017)
#73Right, so the way to get more replies is to convince the reader that they will get a useful answer if they do reply.
One thing you can do is not bury the request (the offer to help) at the end of the message.
Another thing you can do is make your automated message seem like it isn't automated, and a shorter message and better subject helps. But I wonder if it wouldn't be better to say "Yes, this is an automated message, but we read and respond to every response". Why trick your users when you can just tell them the truth?
Re: To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017)
#74To get more responses to your surveys, make your surveys shorter. The massive response rate will make up for the loss in granularity; most of the granularity is not actionable anyway. The tricky thing is that some huge, in-depth survey looks better to your manager, whereas the simple one looks lazily developed.
Re: To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017)
#75A corollary is that if you do have to write a long email, try to start it off with a short, 1-2 sentence intro paragraph that piques interest and pulls people in to the rest of the text.
Even better, try to keep all the paragraphs as short as possible. Each paragraph has two jobs: to convey some information, and to convince the reader to keep going to the next paragraph.
Done right, you can get someone to read a long text without it feeling like they read a lot, because you kept them curious about what comes next the whole way through.
Kurt Vonnegut was a master of this technique. The vast majority his paragraphs are very short. It's almost like prose poetry. You (semi-consciously) keep thinking "I'll just read a few more lines" until you look up after 4 hours and realize you're just a few pages from the end of a 300 page novel.
So it goes.
Re: To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017)
#76I know I have a difficult time responding to long emails. When someone (friend or business) sends me a short email, there's a good chance I'll reply right away if it'll only take a minute. Now, if they send a long email, well, I'm not interested in stopping everything and spending 15 minutes writing it out. So, it goes on the to-do list for later. This keeps getting pushed back again and again, and sometimes never gets done.
I remember when I used online dating sites this was also the case. If I wrote someone a long message, asking a number of questions, it would rarely get a reply. However, if I literally wrote one or two sentences with a single, easy to answer question, I'd get a reply 50% of the time.
Re: To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017)
#77Now that everybody's remote, I think there's an important conversation about respecting the reader's time that needs to happen.
1) Brevity.
2) Get your terminology perfect. Asynchronous "who's on first" sucks.
3) When discussing anything on the web, start with a hyperlink. I can't see your screen, I can't scroll or inspect your screenshots. Expecting the reader to hunt down the resource that you had one ctrl-C, ctrl-V away is rude.
Re: To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017)
#78This applies to internal emails, especially requests to management chain. Whenever possible, aim to keep emails to two lines/sentences max, and put the request always first.
This depends on your management. If they trust you, and typically give you what you need, sure.. request first. But if they are more the kind where it is like pulling teeth to make changes or get more resources, then no - first you need to establish the reasons behind your need, explain the negative impact to the team, propose a solution, and explain how it will benefit the broader organization. You still need to do that all concisely, which is a challenge.
I've used that pattern in emails quite a bit since our company was bought a few years ago, and it works far more reliably than when I just send off a short request.
Re: To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017)
#79I've recently launched https://boxci.dev and have a 'leave your email if you have questions' box on the landing page. People have been leaving their emails, but surprisingly, even though the intent is very clear (I think), almost nobody has actually replied when I've emailed to open the conversation. The kinds of response rate percentages ( My opening email is nothing like as long as the first one in this article, bu…
Relevant for you: https://www.gkogan.co/blog/stop-asking-me-to-sign-up/
Re: To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017)
#80The opposite is also true: to get fewer, higher quality replies, say more. Even if people do respond with low quality responses, it's easier to filter them out because they say things that make no sense if they read the entirety of what they are responding to.
Long-form articles posted to HN are a great example.