Increase Your Email Responses | Video

Do you want to increase your email responses?
I expect you do.

After all, you take the trouble to craft your email. So why wouldn’t you want people to respond to it?

Email will last…

Project Management technology is changing fast. But it’s a fair bet that most of us will still be making a lot of use of email for a few more years. So it is worth looking at any research that can help you get the best from the medium.

A team at the University of Southern California and Yahoo Labs analyzed 16 billion emails exchanged by 2 million users.

This video is safe for viewing in the workplace.

This is learning, so, sit back and enjoy

You can read their original research paper, ‘Evolution of Conversations in the Age of Email Overload’; the lead author is Farshad Kooti.

Here are some of the things you can learn about increasing your email responses:

1. Don’t be offended by a terse reply. More than half had fewer than 43 words, and the most likely length was just five words.
2. To get the quickest response to your emails, send on a weekday, in the morning. Replies take longer, the older the person you send to. Younger respondents are quicker and terser!
3. If your email has an attachment, it can double the reply time.
4. In a series of emails, a longer gap before a response means the conversation is ending.
5. Past Wednesday, reply length drops rapidly each day, jumping back up on Mondays.
6. Longest replies are early in the morning, dropping steadily to a minimum around 11pm and then rising again to peak around 5am. It’s not surprising that replies are slowest between 4 and 6am!
7. As people’s email load increases, they reply to a smaller proportion of incoming mail. So to get through to high email users, maybe try something different.

So, my conclusion…

To maximize your email responses, send your emails early in the morning, and early in the working week. Avoid attachments if you can. Don’t take offense at a terse reply. Consider alternative ways to communicate with busy email users. Email is one of the many strategies for project communication that we cover in our core Project Management Courses. Why not take a look at them? Especially because they are all at reduced prices for a short while longer.

Two other communications videos you may like

• Challenging Communication: Tips for Better Project Communication
• How to Build a Great Project Communications Plan

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