9 amazingly simple ways to make people reply to your messages

On average, we get 120 messages every day. Below are a few ways to make your messages visible and get an answer.

Emails and text messages are easy to send, but they are now just ignored. Considering that the average person receives more than 120 letters a day in tech, it’s hard to be sure that your letter will be read and answered. The same goes for our social networks. We have prepared for you 9 life hacks that will increase your chances of getting an answer.

1. Ask to reply to the message in the subject line

It sounds simple, but sometimes all you have to do is ask for an answer. “If the email requires a response, then alert the recipient in the subject line,” suggests Janine Adams, an event organizer from St. Louis. “Sometimes I reply to messages only if at the end of the subject line it says,“ I NEED ANSWER, ”she says. “It is very effective.”

2. Change the subject line when the subject of the conversation changes.

The subject of discussion may change, especially in long correspondence, which makes the original subject of the letter inappropriate. “People turn off and stop reading letters as soon as they get the information they are interested in, thinking that all further letters do not apply to them,” says Diana Buchen, author of “What more can I say? Why communication does not work out and what to do about it. ” - Therefore, they miss important details and events. By updating the subject line of a message in a conversation, you re-engage all participants in the discussion. ”

3. Do not neglect the greeting

“When an e-mail starts without contacting the recipient by name, he may think that this is a mass mailing and the letter does not require an answer,” says Peggy Duncan, author of Pocket Time Management Handbook: Create Time for Your Life. “In addition, your letter can be understood as a requirement, not a request,” she says. “And to start the letter with a greeting is simply more polite.”

4. Begin your letter with a clearly formulated request

“Do not hide the purpose of your email; start by describing the response you want and the time frame for getting it, ”says Lisa Zaslow, an event planner from New York. “For example:“ Please inform by the end of the day whether we can meet on the 21st of lunch, ”she says.

5. Follow the rule of "golden mean" in the volume of the letter

According to a study by Boomerang email marketing platform, the frequency of replies to letters will increase by half if your letter in volume is from 50 to 125 words. The response rate slowly decreases from 50% for messages of 125 words to about 44% for messages of 500 words. After that, it remains unchanged to a volume of 2000 words, and then sharply reduced.

6. Use third-grade language

A study of the Boomerang platform found that the complexity of the language in the letter greatly affects the likelihood of an answer. Letters written at the third-grader level, using simple constructions and fewer words in a sentence, were more understandable. They were answered 36% more often than letters written in the academic language, and 17% more often than those written in high school. If you want to check the readability of your texts, you can do this on ReadabilityScore.com.

7. Use emotions

A study of the Boomerang platform showed that using a moderate number of emotionally-colored words, such as “great, wonderful, admired, pleased, bad, hateful, furious, terrible”, increases the likelihood of a response to a letter by 10-15% compared to neutral or unnecessarily emotional emails.

Alex Mor, CEO of the Boomerang platform, says that if you submit, for example, a complaint, then it’s better to state it as “Today, a terrible situation happened to me in your store. The employee was very rude to me. Please correct the situation ”instead of“ Your store sucks. Your employee is a moron. Hope you die in agony. ”

8. Format the text

“Use bold and different colors to highlight the expected response,” Zaslow suggests. Formatting may not appear in the recipient’s letter, it depends on the compatibility of mail services, but it’s worth a try.
Duncan adds that you can use bulleted lists to increase the readability of the text, as well as use a different text color to draw attention to the timelines.

9. Consider the time of sending the message.

Send letters in the morning. According to a study by 500,000 emails conducted by Yesware, an email tracking software provider, emails sent from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. receive the highest read rates of about 45%. Fewer emails are sent during this time period, which reduces competition.