That email is way, way too long.
The perfect email
21–30 of 43 posts
Re: The perfect email
#22That email is way, way too long.
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Re: The perfect email
#23Original email writer here. I generally agree with the comments about how it could have been improved. In hindsight, it was probably too wordy. My impression is that David processes emails more "deeply" than the average person, so I think he could handle the wordiness. Others would probably trash it more quickly. I did get a very thoughtful response from David which actually helped us immensely. As a result of taking…
It took me a couple of hours to write the email
This seems weird when someone else says it...but I relate!
To a job well done!
Re: The perfect email
#24I'm only guessing here, but I think that most of the angel investors that I know will trash such an email after reading the first sentence and seeing how much more they still have to read.
There's a magical formula to not make that happen. You write a sentence that makes the person want to read the next one. Even busy people like to read interesting emails.
Sure, but this email starts off poorly.
"We’re starting CriticalArc and we’re focussed on providing solutions to problems that depend on streaming status and location in real time."
Ever since the 90s, the word "solutions" just makes my eyes glaze over. To be fair, it gets interesting after that, but this is not a good way to introduce your company.
Re: The perfect email
#25Original email writer here. I generally agree with the comments about how it could have been improved. In hindsight, it was probably too wordy. My impression is that David processes emails more "deeply" than the average person, so I think he could handle the wordiness. Others would probably trash it more quickly. I did get a very thoughtful response from David which actually helped us immensely. As a result of taking…
> It took me a couple of hours to write the email.
It always takes longer to write short emails, which is why so few people do it.
Re: The perfect email
#26Before sending my emails to co-workers and clients I check the first word of each paragraph. The mistake I tend to make is to start each sentence with "I" (not a native speaker).
Here, we have "I, We, I, Basically, I, As and Hey", and in the middle of the text there are far far more "I"s and "we"s than I find somewhat acceptable, either. Perhaps the rate is this bad in comparison to my language where the subject is given implicitly in affixes?
Regardless, how emails like this one can be seen as focused on the reader when you know less about the target audience?
Re: The perfect email
#27Original email writer here. I generally agree with the comments about how it could have been improved. In hindsight, it was probably too wordy. My impression is that David processes emails more "deeply" than the average person, so I think he could handle the wordiness. Others would probably trash it more quickly. I did get a very thoughtful response from David which actually helped us immensely. As a result of taking…
Well done! I felt it used a lot of the points from this article on how to cold email people: http://www.ashmaurya.com/2012/08/cold-emailing/
Re: The perfect email
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a magical formula to not make that happen. You write a sentence that makes the person want to read the next one. Even busy people like to read interesting emails.
Sure, but this email starts off poorly. "We’re starting CriticalArc and we’re focussed on providing solutions to problems that depend on streaming status and location in real time." Ever since the 90s, the word "solutions" just makes my eyes glaze over. To be fair, it gets interesting after that, but this is not a good way to introduce your company.
For me, that was an especially good starting statement, though with no cliffhanger as such.
It reflected the emailer's intention to not waste my time. Tells me who they are, and tells me it's not a sort of long-winded spam. Sure, I have skimmed it (glazed over?) and came back to it later after reading other parts of the email. But it gave me the option to bail out while promising interesting things if I am interested.
Re: The perfect email
#29It's actually summer in Australia from between December to February...
Re: The perfect email
#30Original email writer here. I generally agree with the comments about how it could have been improved. In hindsight, it was probably too wordy. My impression is that David processes emails more "deeply" than the average person, so I think he could handle the wordiness. Others would probably trash it more quickly. I did get a very thoughtful response from David which actually helped us immensely. As a result of taking…
> It took me a couple of hours to write the email. It always takes longer to write short emails, which is why so few people do it.
Writing a short email is easy. All it takes is actually knowing what you're trying to say.