Want to get a response to your email?

Looking at the title you might think this blog post is for marketers and sales people. For people who want you to buy their product or service.

Yes it could be, but it's really talking to ANYONE who sends an email, hoping to get a response from the recipient. That could be a colleague, boss, supplier, customer, friend, or family member.

 Does anyone read email?

Here's the first thing I need to point out, and it may come as a shock to you. Nobody reads email anymore……..they scan! A quick check of email on their phone before (or during) a meeting. A short peek in outlook following an email notification, then getting straight back into the report they are writing. A final brief check on their phone before falling asleep.

Any of that sound familiar? It’s not just you, it's most people. People check their email on average 36 times a day. So where would they fit in the time to actually, and I mean properly, read emails. Let alone actually reply to them.

It's about design, for results

So if we want a response to the email we send, or we want someone to go and do something as a result of it, we need to start thinking differently.

And with that thinking we then begin to design and craft our emails differently. Making them easy for the recipeint to spot, digest, decode, and create action from.

If you want to write the equivalent to War & Peace in an email, and hiding your question in the middle, then that’s fine. But don’t expect the reader to easily find, or even bother to scan down as far as it.

 Increasing your odds of a response

What if you simply started popping your questions at the beginning of the email, with the detail further down. That may just increase your odds of that response.

 It's also key to re-read your emails before sending, then asking yourself, "If someone were sending this to me and I only had 30 seconds to read it, would it motivate me to respond"? If the answer is Yes, the go and test it out, you may just surprise yourself.

Wanting to improve yours and your organisation's email craft and respond tactics, then consider booking me to deliver my 3-hour Outbox Hero workshop at your site