As the jobs of the world continue embracing remote work, people are finding themselves drowning in days filled with Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting. It’s understandable, given the shift from office culture to one where teams are more distributed. It feels natural, in a way, to insist upon meetings. Meetings give coworkers time to discuss action items, they allow for synchronization in planning, and managers love having instant...
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Every email has to start somehow. But (unless your name is Fetty Wap) you can only choose one salutation, whether it’s “Hey,” “What’s up,” “Hello,” or something else. So what’s the best way to start an email? We know that thankful email closings yield higher response rates, so let’s see if there are likewise any openings that tend to get more replies. We used the same...
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Most of the time, spam filters work amazingly, saving us from an inundation of scandalous, fraudulent, or other junk emails. But sometimes they fail, diverting legitimate emails you need to your spam folder. Spam filters can mistakenly flag emails that aren’t spam at all – sometimes, even important ones. False positives are more likely when you write someone for the first time, or send a message to someone on a different domain...
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Now and then, I get an email with a subject line in all capital letters, often “URGENT” or otherwise imploring me to read the message or take an action. I always wonder why people pen such subjects, as many email etiquette articles warn that writing in all caps can come across as yelling. But, netiquette aside, people do it anyway. Might using all caps in a subject line be effective (even if rude?) Boomerang previously looked at how...
Read MoreWhen you’re drafting an email, ending it is the easiest part. Whether you sign-off with “Warmest Regards,” “Thanks,” or “Keep On Keepin’ On,” it only takes a second, and you probably don’t give it a second thought. Do email closings even matter? And if so, is “best” really best? We looked at closings in over 350,000 email threads, and found that certain email closings deliver higher response rates.
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Your Monday morning alarm might be the worst sound in the world. Weekends fly by, but Mondays drag on forever. As avid Office Space fans, we wondered if having a “case of the Mondays” was an observable phenomenon. Our finding? Monday really is the worst day of the week: it’s when people make the most mistakes in their email subjects (which, as we will show, matters), as well as the day with the most negative email subjects. Subject...
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