Yes, they got your email. That much we know. The average office worker sends or receives 121 emails a day, according to a recent report from the Radicati Group.
Chances are they opened it as well since Americans have a penchant for checking their emails 'round the clock. 42 percent of Americans check their email in the bathroom, 50 percent check email while in bed, and 18 percent check their email while driving, Adobe found.
With people checking their email all day long, why haven't you gotten a response yet? Let's crack that question wide open.
Boomerang analyzed more than 40 million emails to find the secrets to getting more responses to your emails.
Below are the top five tricks to craft the perfect email and get a response.
1. Send at the right time
Send the email early in the morning or during lunch to increase your response rate. Emails sent mid-morning or in the afternoon have lower response rates.
If you're trying to reach a person who is notoriously hard to get a hold of, make note what time you typically receive a response from him/her. Send future emails around that same time.
Remember, you can schedule emails to send at a later time, too.
2. Shorten the subject line
Get a response by crafting a short, clear subject line using only three to four words.
Other studies by Marketing Sherpa found that email subject lines between 61 to 70 characters had the highest read rate.
3. Keep it simple
Write at a third-grade reading level, and you'll have the best chance of getting a response to your email.
Compose your email as normal, then pop it in a readability tool. The Hemmingway Editor quickly analyzes the grade level of your text while also highlighting hard-to-read words and sentences. Spend 30 seconds improving your email copy, and it will pay off big time.
While you're at it, see how many questions you've included. Ask between one and three questions, and you're 50 percent more likely to get a response than asking no questions at all. Think about it. If you ask a question, it's clear you're looking for a response. Your reader feels more inclined to answer you.
Just don't go overboard. If you include eight or more questions, your response rate drops.
4. Make it shorter
Writing shorter, simpler emails is your absolute best shot at getting it opened and receiving a response.
Pen emails between 50 and 125 words, and you're golden.
5. Don't be neutral
No one likes receiving neutral, ho-hum emails. Those are the ones that are opened and instantly forgotten. Let's face it — they’re boring to write, and they're boring to read.
Spice it up. Emails that are slightly to moderately positive or negative were opened 10 to 15 percent more than neutral emails.
So how do you make your email more interesting? Include an opinion. The more opinionated email, the higher the response rate. Sprinkle in a handful of these words into your copy to boost your response rate even more:
- great
- wonderful
- delighted
- pleased
- bad
- hate
- furious
- terrible
