How To Write Emails For Busy People

We’ve all been there. We just spent 45 minutes crafting the world’s most articulate, well-thought out, fool-proof 10-point plan--and then we copy and paste it into an email, because true art is done in Word, not Outlook. Outlined in this grand and all-important manifesto are 5 perfectly thought out questions; an outline meticulously detailing the next 90 days; and a 3-part introductory paragraph gracefully outlining the subject, thesis, and a brief explanation on key themes/topics. The bottom line—over the last 45 minutes, you have turned lead into gold. You, Mr. or Mrs. Alchemist, have crafted a masterpiece of the like the world has never seen. You sit smugly for a few moments. Sipping some coffee coming from a machine in the office that hasn’t been properly sanitized in the past few weeks and in a mug you probably should have washed a few uses ago, but that doesn’t matter because you’re now basking in all the glory of your work of art. Trumpets blare as an Angel’s choir sings your chariot through your triumphant marble arches. You then ceremoniously hit send—lean back in your ergonomic chair—and humbly await for the reply—which will likely have a promotion offer letter, company shares, and a raise attached to it.

As time goes by, you think to yourself of how well-received your email must have been. The delayed response time could only be the result of the recipient pulling an all-hands meeting to discuss the significance of the critical stance your third paragraph takes on the status of the reporting backlog and the set of world-altering questions you neatly buttoned it off with. Hopefully they take the same time and care to discuss the strategy you outlined in subsection 6 of paraph 7 regarding the methods and procedures used to manage next quarter’s expense budgets.

As I’ve mentioned—we’ve all done this. Obviously—not to this exaggerated extent (at least I hope not); but we’ve all put tremendous effort into a lengthy email that covers everything that’s important and valuable to that stakeholder and your business. It’s also likely that we’ve all experienced the same result—which can be neatly summed up in these three scenarios:

1.)   No reply

2.)   “Sounds good, thanks.”

3.)   Answers the least important question of the 5 asked.

It’s very frustrating when you write an email which you have put a lot of thought into, and you don’t get the result you’re looking for. It’s very frustrating asking five important questions, but only getting answers to one or two of them. The important question for us to answer is how do we solve this? TLDR (too long, didn’t read) is a very real thing. In most cases, TLDR doesn’t exist because the person is intentionally being dismissive or rude (though this does happen). Instead, it’s generally because they’re very busy and have 10 other pressing matters to attend to. It happens because the person is busy, and when they’re looking at the lengthy email, they flag it and move it to a “work on later” file. The problem is, good intentions be damned, they don’t eventually get to it. Or even worse, if they do get to it--“Sounds good, thanks.”

The good news is—this isn’t rocket science. In fact, the solution is something you’ve most likely been taught from a very young age. When you’re dealing with a big, daunting task—the advice folks normally give is “one step at a time.” I’m not recommending to go out and eat elephants, I’d probably get some angry mail from PETA for doing so, but there is the metaphor of eating an elephant—you don’t do it in one big bite, you eat it in smaller chunks.

It’s important to understand that email is a correspondence—you send something, somebody (God willing) replies. You can then send another reply to their reply, and you generate some back and forth conversation. Now, I’m not proposing to use email like chat—that’s annoying. I’m also not recommending to use email in the place of a 2 minute phone call either. Common sense will need to come into play at some point. With those caveats—here’s what I recommend: break up your email into smaller bites. When an email looks like a book—or a page out of War and Peace—people do a calculation in their head of how much time it will take to read and respond to it. If they have the time to do so—maybe they will. Or maybe they’ll cycle between their facebook, Instagram, and outlook a few times in the hopes that something less daunting will pop up soon. Leverage the fact that email is a correspondence—and bring focus to the email. What do I need the recipient to do first? Is it to review a report and answer a couple basic questions? Is it to set a meeting? Is it to discuss the weather and last week’s episode of Game of Thrones? Each email should only contain a few action items of the recipient—and these action items should all be centered around the same task (that’s the focus part). Make it easy to respond. Once you get a response—follow up with your additional asks—this helps build dialogical momentum (I just coined that term—gold star!).

When an email has more than 2-3 things that the recipient must do in order to reply, it generally becomes more arduous for them to do so. There will absolutely be times where a big email, with myriad action items needs to be set—but those generally come at times when the team is read into the situation and folks are prepared to set aside time for a longer response.

As the sender—we have to be very aware of what ours and our recipient’s focus is. We also have to be realistic in assuming that everything written in the email won’t be read—especially if it’s very long. This point leads to the importance of having an accurate/succinct subject line. Your subject line shouldn’t be “A couple questions on the report I sent last week and will you please sit down and meet with me to discuss this upcoming project sometime between 10-12 on Thursday and 8-noon on Friday. Oh, and everyone dies in Infinity War except a couple people but I forgot who lived.” But rather, “Questions Re: Oct15 report.” The body of that email shouldn’t be an imposing wall of text bringing back flashbacks of Jane Austin in an English Literature class. It should be a couple lines of text with a couple easy to see/scan bulleted questions.

Jim,

Thanks for catching up with me on last week’s report. Attached is the updated version, let me know your thoughts. Here’s a couple questions I had when making it:

1.)   Who’s in charge of approving x?

2.)   What cadence does this need to be sent?

3.)   Who does it need to be distributed to?

Thanks-

Riley

Notice that I didn’t ask for the meeting in this email—the reason being, is that meeting is a distraction from the focus that Jim needs to have regarding responding to the questions I had with the report. Once Jim responds—I’ll then change the subject and ask for a time to meet. Little bites—not whole elephants. Even an email as simple as the one above—however, may have too many action items. Jim must review the report (1), provide feedback on it (2), and answer the three questions (3,4,5). 5 action items is quite a few; with that said, the style and format of the email makes it easy to answer.

This article has been filled with caveats—and I’m going to add another. Pay attention to your audience. If you have an audience who prefers knocking things out in one big bang because that’s his/her working style—then don’t piecemeal the emails. With that said—make sure you organize them with coherent and focused groupings. I would also consider, when doing this, to leverage the rules of primacy and put the most important tasks first—those are generally the ones that will get the most attention.

One last note on writing in general—and this is the English major in me speaking. Don’t overcomplicate your writing. Don’t use bigger words than you must. Don’t bust out the thesaurus for business writing—it’s okay to use words repeatedly if they’re accurate. We aren’t writing Paradise Lost—we’re trying to communicate accurately and quickly. If you’re writing doesn’t read like you speak—you’re probably overthinking it. Also—understand that emails don’t have the advantage of tone. People can’t always tell that you’re being sarcastic. Sometimes people will read into a “…” a lot more than they should:

Eg: lol nice article…  (I would probably read this as—“this was the dumbest thing I’ve read,” which may be true, but emotions and feelings are complicated).

Don’t shy away from your own character in your emails—but be careful that the email comes across to your audience the way you want it to. It’s not as important that your communications make sense to you—but rather that it makes sense to your audience, there is a difference.

In my experience, the best advice I’ve received generally solicits from me a “duh” or a response alluding to the absence of fecal matter. If you’ve read this far—then hopefully you’re thinking or saying the same thing. I doubt this topic will engender much conversation or a thorough debate—but please feel free to share your ideas as well.