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Say less in your emails, get more replies (2017)

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Re: Say less in your emails, get more replies (2017)

#31

Post by Dalewyn »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #2

People are notorious for not reading or responding to email. Even business email, about topics vital to their job. If a reply is needed, they'll address either the first or last point raised. Never, ever all the points. Never completely. No wonder people tend to call so many meetings. They can corner colleagues, get a complete, coherent response to complex issues. I wonder if Slack is any better? Do folks respond bet…

>People are notorious for not reading or responding to email.

People are notorious for not reading, period.

RTFM, et al. exist for a reason.

Re: Say less in your emails, get more replies (2017)

#33

Post by keybored »

gk1 wrote: post #24
gmuslera wrote: post #15

Notice the asymmetries in work, you send an automated mail with zero load for you, and, interested or not, the user should have to read all your mail, and decide that there is even more work to do if he wants to reply. You have minimum effort in one side, maximum in the paying other. With a short mail at least the reading work is not so bad, but you still have the analysis one. But giving out information that should…

(Author here) What I've learned, after hundreds of convos with developers sparked by emails like this, is that many people are happy that someone from the company is interested in their project and their opinions. Those who feel that way are glad to get this and they're glad that there's no burden on them to get on a call or schedule a zoom or fill out a questionnaire or even click out of their email client. And thos…

> And those who don't want to be bothered, well at most they've lost 5 seconds of their day to read the email start to finish.

That adds up man.

Re: Say less in your emails, get more replies (2017)

#34

Post by ghaff »

nottorp wrote: post #18
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #2

People are notorious for not reading or responding to email. Even business email, about topics vital to their job. If a reply is needed, they'll address either the first or last point raised. Never, ever all the points. Never completely. No wonder people tend to call so many meetings. They can corner colleagues, get a complete, coherent response to complex issues. I wonder if Slack is any better? Do folks respond bet…

> If a reply is needed, they'll address either the first or last point raised. Never, ever all the points. Never completely. Use numbered short topics instead of a wall of text, even if they're all in the same email. It usually gets me a lot more answers than something more prose like. > I wonder if Slack is any better? Do folks respond better to one question at a time? Post numbered short topics :)

As a writer I sort of hate it, but bullets--often in a slide format--tend to make more sense in a business setting. And, yes, shorter is generally better.

Re: Say less in your emails, get more replies (2017)

#35

Post by jkaptur »

gk1 wrote: post #24
gmuslera wrote: post #15

Notice the asymmetries in work, you send an automated mail with zero load for you, and, interested or not, the user should have to read all your mail, and decide that there is even more work to do if he wants to reply. You have minimum effort in one side, maximum in the paying other. With a short mail at least the reading work is not so bad, but you still have the analysis one. But giving out information that should…

(Author here) What I've learned, after hundreds of convos with developers sparked by emails like this, is that many people are happy that someone from the company is interested in their project and their opinions. Those who feel that way are glad to get this and they're glad that there's no burden on them to get on a call or schedule a zoom or fill out a questionnaire or even click out of their email client. And thos…

I know nothing about promotional email, but I'm curious if you ever provided links so that the user didn't have to type an answer in order to provide a bit of information - something along the lines of "I'm using this for a personal project" or "I'm considering this for my company".

Re: Say less in your emails, get more replies (2017)

#38

Post by eddd-ddde »

amelius wrote: post #17
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #2

People are notorious for not reading or responding to email. Even business email, about topics vital to their job. If a reply is needed, they'll address either the first or last point raised. Never, ever all the points. Never completely. No wonder people tend to call so many meetings. They can corner colleagues, get a complete, coherent response to complex issues. I wonder if Slack is any better? Do folks respond bet…

"Hi, this is ChatGPT, and I noticed that in this reply you did not address all the points raised by the sender of the email."

Oh yes please, I honestly might make this a thing just for fun.

A cloudflare email agent that intercepts emails and scolds the sender if they don't give meaningful responses.

Re: Say less in your emails, get more replies (2017)

#39

Post by ska »

0xmutt wrote: post #6
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #2

People are notorious for not reading or responding to email. Even business email, about topics vital to their job. If a reply is needed, they'll address either the first or last point raised. Never, ever all the points. Never completely. No wonder people tend to call so many meetings. They can corner colleagues, get a complete, coherent response to complex issues. I wonder if Slack is any better? Do folks respond bet…

With regards to Slack or other asynchronous communication methods, its generally a mixed bag in my experience. Folks still tend to target some and not all of the points. Which then leads to more follow-ups. I wonder if this has to do with other interruptions on Slack (or other mediums) occurring at the same time. Pretty common to be responding to something only to be interrupted by something else that pulls your atte…

I don’t understand the distinction you are trying for here - email is also async.

Re: Say less in your emails, get more replies (2017)

#40

Post by ska »

Bluestein wrote: post #7
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #2

People are notorious for not reading or responding to email. Even business email, about topics vital to their job. If a reply is needed, they'll address either the first or last point raised. Never, ever all the points. Never completely. No wonder people tend to call so many meetings. They can corner colleagues, get a complete, coherent response to complex issues. I wonder if Slack is any better? Do folks respond bet…

Indeed. The oft said "this meeting could have been an email" ... ... well. Sometimes, no.-

A counter is: this 4 day string of 23 emails could have been a 15 min meeting.
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