7 Tips to Get Your Emails Read

Tips to encourage your emails to be read.

Email is not the venue for a manifesto. Instead, concise messaging and structure, which many folks need to work on, are crucial to getting your emails read.

Email is part of our lives, both personally and in business communications. Because of that, it is even more important to learn how to communicate succinctly. This includes structuring your emails to make them easy to read.

Lengthy emails with lots of text, especially those without paragraph breaks every several sentences, don’t get read. Instead, they get scanned—if that.

What if the recipient is not interested or inclined to dive in? How you structure your email can make all the difference in the world.

I’ve even caught myself scanning instead of reading when pressed for time. Haven’t you?

Put Bullet Points to Work

Bullet points are your friend. Visually, they don’t look like too much to tackle. We can surmise that an email will be easily read at a glance. That, in turn, encourages the entire email to be read.

Subconsciously, the recipient thinks they can absorb your points in little tidbits. So they are more likely to read your email in its entirety.

Emails Should Not be Manifestos

Be sure to break up your text into paragraphs every couple of sentences. Visually big blocks of text can cause folks to start scanning.
Be sure to break up your text into paragraphs every couple of sentences. Visually big blocks of text can cause folks to start scanning.
With very complex topics, say, more than a few short paragraphs, create a document in PDF and send that along as an attachment. This allows the other side to review all the details when they have time and file/print it for later review.
Use brief, concise bullet points when covering multiple thoughts or issues to increase the likelihood they are absorbed and acted on.
No need to code HTML bullet points. Use => or * to separate your points.
Stick to one topic per email. Cover unrelated topics in separate emails.
When you need a response or want input, close your email by asking for it. “Can you let me know?” “Would love to hear from you!”

Email is Not Meant for ALL Communications

Better yet, if you find you are long-winded, pick up the phone. You know the topics and conversations that are best talked about instead of putting them into writing.

At the very least, stop and think about the best approach to ensure the other side reads, reviews, and absorbs your information. Especially if you would like them to reply to the topic at hand.

Forget about all the blah, blah, blah you feel you need to get across, and pare your emails down to only clear and concise points. Then, in your closing, tell the other side what you would like them to do next. That’s how you increase the odds of getting the response you desire.