15 Tips for Writing Effective Email | thinksimplenow.com

19 May 2009

TakeALook…

Have you ever needed to email someone - a stranger, asking them for
a favor? How can one compose email such that they will be read and
responded to? How do we effectively email someone who gets a lot of
email?

Whether personal or business, the ability to compose efficient and
effective email is super useful - both in terms of productivity and
responsiveness.

We’re all busy, and we’ve all received long, ambiguous and rambling
email. Ironically, most of us have also been guilty of writing such
verbose email while requesting for someone else’s time.

Now that I’ve had a little taste, on the receiving end of such
email, it quickly became obvious which kind of email works and which do
not. I have made some interesting and useful observations on effective
email - particularly,

What not to do when emailing someone (ie. a stranger).
How to write email that people will actually (want to) read.

The point of this article is to share tips on how to approach people
via email in the most efficient way possible, along with some common
pitfalls on why some emails do not work.

Assumptions

Before we dive in, let’s lay out some assumptions:

The recipient (person you are emailing) potentially gets a lot of email
You need something from the recipient and plan on pitching it via email
You either do not know the recipient, or she is an acquaintance,
or she is a close friend and you’re asking for an unusual request.

Our goal is to construct email that:

Will actually be read
Will actually be understood
Will not annoy the receiver
Does not take up too much time on the receiver’s end.

Email Psychology

Generally speaking, the sender and receiver see things from
drastically different points of views. And from the perspective of a
sender, we often do not spend time understanding who the receiver is
and what their inbox might look like. Let’s have a quick glance at both
sides:

Observing the Receiver