It’s hard to keep up with busy individuals these days, especially when it comes to emails. When our inboxes are full and our calendars are full, sometimes the most important emails don’t get read. This article will teach you five easy steps on how to get a reply from busy people through email.
1. Keep it Short and Simple
The biggest challenge with replying to emails is that they take time. People who are always busy have neither the time nor patience for reading messages. Therefore, it is essential to make your emails concise and straight forward. Limit yourself to three or five paragraphs, one main theme per email. Put multiple requests or thoughts in bullet points or numbered lists. Being concise and straightforward will boost your chances of being seen and read.
2. Make the Subject Line Count
Email recipients often scan a subject line in the email’s first glance. This means that the subject line plays a crucial role in deciding if the email will be opened or ignored. To get your subject line right, try the following tips:
Keep it concise: As people increasingly use smartphones, subject lines that are too long can be cut off which makes them useless. Try to keep the subject line under 50 characters.
Relevant: When sending an email, you want to be sure that the subject line conveys precisely what you are sending. The objective of a succinct subject line is to make sure the email recipient understands what you are sending them, thus avoiding being skipped or unsubscribed. Alternatively, with an obscure or misleading subject line, the email recipient may disregard or delete your message and waste your time and effort. Therefore, always put some effort into writing relevant and informative subject lines in order to make sure your email will be read and responded to.
Make it unique: You can use a name or other personalized information in the subject to help make the email open.
Be action-oriented: Write subject lines that contain action verbs and heavy phrases that make recipients feel like they have to do something and open your email as it’s urgent.
Evaluation and evaluation: Track how often your emails are opened and use this information to evaluate what subjects are the best. Work with this information to refine your strategy and increase the chances of receiving a response.
3. Timing is Everything
Sending an email in the correct time frame has the potential to affect the likelihood of it getting read and acted on immediately. Studies show that the ideal time to send an email is 9-11 am on a Tuesday or Thursday. These coincide with periods where the majority are checking their emails after the weekend or focused on work during the week. But remember that it’s not always the optimal moment to send, depending on the timezone, industry, and lifestyle of the person receiving it. If possible, take the time to find out about the timing of the recipient and change your timing accordingly.
4. Ensure You Have a Clear Call to Action.
Making a prominent CTA is essential when attracting busy professionals to your emails. The CTA (call-to-action) is a phrase or button that invites the reader to take a desired action, like replying to the email or scheduling a meeting. Here are some tips for making a CTA successful:
Be Specific: Vagueness generates inertia. Write your CTA so you know exactly what you want the other person to do. Don’t make a blanket statement, say, “Tell me at the end of the day when you can reach out next week if you have time”. That detailed instruction will help the email recipient know what to do next.
Make It Thrive: Don’t hide the highly effective CTA somewhere in the middle of your email. Format it with bold, italics, or even buttons to make it stand out. You can place your CTA in a different color or font from the rest of the design to make it pop out and be easy to read.
– Make it Action-Oriented: Language is dynamic, and therefore active action verbs help to convey urgency to a demand. “Call today” or “Book your tickets today” do not merely demand action, but encourage the reader to act.
Simple: Your receiver will probably be too occupied to get the desired action done, so make it simple. When you give links or even buttons to book a meeting or respond immediately, you’re cutting out friction that might keep them from responding. Offering, for example, to “Book a Meeting” along with a link to open a calendar planner can increase response rates by several fold.
Test and Measure: No single CTA fits all. Testing is your way of knowing what’s going to get the best result and you’ll be able to communicate better with your audience. Watch how different CTAs do- variations, style, placement-and measure the effectiveness to refine your strategy. This data-based insight will, in turn, allow you to continually tweak your plan for maximum effectiveness.
5. Follow Up Politely
When you don’t hear back within a reasonable period of time, feel free to send a courteous reminder. This can refresh the recipient’s mind and show them that you remain tenacious. If you send a follow-up email, please reference the original email, reiterate your request, and update it with new information that may be available. Stay upbeat and professional, respect the time constraints of the recipient and let them know you appreciate their time and effort.
Lastly, making people take the time to answer emails takes planning and consideration. By keeping messages short and sweet, creating strong subject lines, emailing when appropriate, using a call to action, and being courteous, you can make a world of difference when it comes to receiving a response. Use these five simple strategies to ensure your emails appear in a packed inbox and get your point across to the busiest of people.
