How to Write Emails If You Want People to Actually Respond

Writing at Third Grade Level – For Email Replies

According to the makers of Boomerang mail plug-in, one of the best way in getting a reply to unanswered emails is to write as if you are a nine years old. As per their observation, writing at a third grade reading level is considered to be the right level of complexity for the average message after mining the data of the user for information on what type of writing would normally get replies. It is worth considering taking extra time to think why one would want to write like a nine year old.

 Emails tend to get a bad knock these days and are often considered to be inefficient. Viewing most of the email writing styles from Boomerang, the main thing of making messages seem better,are to keep the focus on ease. In order to get replies, the company recommends the use of shorter, simpler stretches and hence the third grading reading level could be helpful. Writing them this way would normally acquire a response rate of 53% as against the 45% for the messages written at a high school reading level. Simple writing too could reduce the chances of a reply.

Bit Expressive – Best Option of Getting Responses

Messages written at a kindergarten reading level would receive replies only at 46% of the time. However the poorest response rate would be for those writing at a college reading level at 39%. The company also observed that being a bit more expressive is the best option of getting responses. With an opinion and adding some emotional tone either positive or negative could also get a better result instead of being totally neutral. It also depends on how much one should say, to get too rambling would not get you the response one would be waiting to receive.

On the other hand if one is too brief, you could get a low response rate. If the email recipient would need extra information in making a decision or to understand the email’s subject, provide the necessary information as an attachment or a link. The reason for writing an email to a person is with the purpose of receiving a response from them, however too often than not, some of the emails tend to be overlooked or forgotten since they could be too long, too brief, too complex or do not provide adequate information.

Top Six Tips

Boomerang, email-efficiency service examined through data from around 5.3 million emails to check what type of messages would prompt the most replies from recipients. They came up with some useful discoveries. Alex Moore at Boomerang Blog reviews their top six tips established on their data. The following is the full list of the tips from the makers of Boomerang:

•  Usage of shorter sentences together with simpler words such as a third grade reading level seems to be the best  
• Including one to three questions in the email 
• Make sure that you include a subject line and aim for three to four words 
• Using of slightly positive or slightly negative tone since both could overtake a totally neutral tone 
• Take a stand, since intolerant messages tend to see higher response rate than objective ones 
• Write adequate though not too much and attempt to keep the messages between 50 to 125 words