You can only get someone to do one thing per email.
This may sound like a no-brainer, but most people don’t do this. Most people email someone and try to get them to do three different things. When you do that, the cognitive overhead of responding to your email becomes too great—your recipient decides to “get to it later,” and your email languishes in their inbox.
You want to make it as easy as possible for the recipient of your email to do the thing you want them to do. Here’s how:
Know your one objective and make sure your email explicitly drives towards it.
Keep it short.
Clearly state a call-to-action in the final sentence of the email.
Make your call-to-action easy to respond to. Ideally, they can reply “yes” and you will have achieved your objective.
(Table stakes: Always make sure you spell their name and their company name correctly.)
A note on “scheduling a call” emails
The best way to set a meeting with a busy person is to propose a specific time. For example: “I’m free from 1pm-3pm Pacific on Friday. Would 2:30pm work for you?” That way, they can just reply “yes” and the meeting is set.
You might think that the most polite thing is to be flexible (“I’m free whenever”), but this actually creates more work, since it guarantees that at least two more emails have to be sent before the meeting is confirmed (one proposing the time, and one accepting the time). If you give them something specific, they can just accept and be done.
(I also like Calendly and similar tools for this purpose—you can set a time without needing an elaborate back-and-forth.)
Now, following my own advice: please share this post with your friends.
Great post!