Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet this is ubiquitous. Nearly nobody reads the whole thing, or if they do they respond to only the most interesting part. The rest is ignored. I have a rule: Ask exactly one question in an email. Because asking more doesn't ever work.
The trick to asking more than one question is to number them. Dear Ms. Busy Client, In order to complete Project X on time, we need your decisions about the following by end of day Friday, please: 1) How many widgets will be required? 2) Do you prefer the red or the green? 3) If we order the widgets from China instead of Mexico, we can save $10 per widget, but delivery will take twice as long. We believe this trade-o…
In this example it might not make a difference, but sometimes you can make some progress if you get to know if it should be red or green even before you know if they want to move production to China.
Most importantly, many questions make the email feel more overwhelming. Three short emails can each often get an immediate response. An email with three questions needs to be found time to answer.