5 rules of e-mail-etiquette or how to always get answers to their letters

Write a letter is not too difficult, but how to do so, to get an answer from the busy person who does not know you?

Mattan Griffel, the leader of the training project One Month Rails and project partner GrowhackDaily receives about hundreds of emails, and each of them must not go unanswered. Especially for this Mattan allocates about an hour in your schedule each day to determine which of them require an immediate answer, and what - no. Indeed, sometimes there is no time to peruse the huge canvas of the text or attempt to answer the question is vague, reprises of the author, that he wanted to say or ask.

After some time, Mattan identified several major factorsWhich should help to write this e-mail, which you will always get a response even from a busy person.

Write a short letter

If your e-mail length in 2-3 sentences, it is much easier to read now, and not be shelved. If you write a letter in a few paragraphs, be prepared for the fact that you have to wait for an answer for a long time.

Make text readable

A person is much easier to perceive information broken down into short paragraphs of a few sentences, with clear lists and individual blocks than the continuous web of the text. Mattan gives several examples of letters he receives.

Bad example:

"Good afternoon, Mattan!

I signed up for your training April and would like to say that this is a very good introductory course. I'll follow your advice, use Hartl Tutorial. And I want to ask you for advice. Are there any analogues Hartl's Rails Tutorial to develop applications for the iPhone? I want to create a Rails site for my wife's business, and with it the application for the iPhone. I would be very grateful for the help. "

This letter is quite hard to read. You can not grasp the essence, just run through it through the eyes, and therefore must spend more time and effort to read the entire text.

And you can write this:

"Good afternoon, Mattan!

I want to thank you for the course One Month Rails. On your advice I'm doing Michael Hartl Ruby, using Rails tutorial.

I have a quick question: do you know any courses HartTutorial type, but for iPhone applications?»

The second version of the letter is much easier to read, and once it becomes clear that from you want. To achieve the same effect, separate the paragraphs on short sentences, highlight a call to action and use the text selection "bold" or "italic", drawing the reader's attention to the important part of the text.

Clearly explain what you want me to do

Probably, there is nothing worse than when you send a letter with more information, but do not say exactly what they want. Personally, I often respond to such letters in a sentence: "What do you want me to do?".

You want me to have someone introduced? Or to read your blog post and give feedback? Or do you want me to answer that, if I could attend your event? Be specific and tell me about it right away.

Bad example:

I just looked at your course on computer programming. I am 14 and this is what I wanted to do in life. Could you help me with this? I very much want to get your answer.

In this letter, call to action, "Help me," but I do not know what it means and what answer I should give. A more specific version:

Good afternoon, Mattan!

I am 14 and I want to learn programming. What resources would you recommend to me in the first place for this?

If you need to send a long letter with more information, write a call to action at the beginning. For example: "I am writing this letter to you to see if you can visit our event, as described below. Just answer "Yes" or "No".

This technique also helps the recipient to determine whether it needs to forward the e-mail to his colleague, whom he often delegate such tasks.

Be reasonable with your request

Today it is very easy to send a letter, spending is 30 seconds, which will cause the recipient to devote answer hour of his time, and even more.

No need to ask in the letter, so I went to the website of your startup and give you feedback. This request includes a thorough review and analysis of the product, and it takes a lot of time. If I get a letter, to which I can respond in 2 minutes, I immediately do it. About what you want to get the answer? What about your business model? Or the color of the button on the site? Perhaps the text? Be specific and justified in its requests.

It is not necessary to hope that the respondent will do for you, your job and determine what you actually want from it. It is not necessary to ask the question of the type "How do you think that we need to do to get more users?". And do not ask for that requires a lot of strength and human resources, to which you are applying. For example:

Do you agree to have dinner with me and another co-founder? We would like to tell you what we do, and to know your opinion about our project.

Such requests shall often mean that the person who wrote the letter, does not really know what he wants from the respondent. It is not surprising that such emails are denied.

Depending on the amount of work and prioritization, Mattan agrees to do the following:

• Post a short answer - "Thank you" or "It means a lot to me."
• Answer to a specific question - if it can be done in less than 2 minutes.
• Hold fast skype-call or talking on the phone - about 15 minutes.
• Meet for coffee - about 45 minutes.

Of course, if he sees that a personal meeting can be replaced by a telephone conversation, he would insist on the last to save your time.

Prove why should I spend the time to help you

The person who receives hundreds of inquiries and requests every day, physically can not respond to them all. Therefore, we have to choose, based on the information it receives. Therefore, introducing himself in the letter should indicate about his past successful experience of work on the projects that the respondent knows. If you do not already rich experience, provide a link to your site in order to prove that you're doing something really meaningful. Your task - human interest and motivate them to spend their time just for you.

These councils are nothing new, but they can be used to write a concise, readable and a specific e-mail, and thus increase their chances of getting a response.

And what would you add to the list of personal experience? What tricks are using to get answers to their letters (especially if you write a person for the first time)? Share your experiences in the comments.