
To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017) - gk1
https://www.gkogan.co/blog/increase-reply-rates/
======
formerly_proven
The shorter the email the more believable it becomes that it was specifically
written by a human directed at you, not a mass-used template. If you feel like
you get an automatic email, you're not going to respond, because you don't
want to talk to a computer. If, on the other hand, you can suspend your
disbelief and entertain the fiction that someone named "Valerie" at E-Corp
personally contacted you, you are infinitely more likely to respond.

Edit: "Welcome to ${service name}" is also a poor subject line if you expect
an answer, because the subject line literally says "this is an automated email
to let you know that your click on the register button has been indeed
processed correctly. You probably have to click on the big colorful button in
the body of this email to activate your account."

~~~
cnity
That's one thing, but another thing that is not listed as one of the possible
reasons is simply that the original email is just verbose and _bad_. Imagine a
person in real life gave you that spiel, of course you'd be put off.

~~~
gk1
> the original email is just verbose and _bad_

I agree 100%. The thing is, a lot of welcome emails look like that. It's bad
but not uncommon.

------
lpolovets
I had a similar experience at LinkedIn in its early days. Back when we had
maybe 500k members, we A/B tested the hell out of our invite messages. These
messages were critical because no one had heard of LinkedIn at the time
(~2004ish) and no one knew what social networking was or why they would want
to sign up. And getting new users to accept invites was incredibly important
to us. We A/B tested many invite email formats:

* A paragraph explaining social networking and another paragraph explaining LinkedIn.

* A few paragraphs on the benefits of joining LinkedIn.

* A few paragraphs explaining that a LinkedIn invitation was special because it meant that the inviter trusted and respected the invitee and wanted to stay in touch professionally.

* A tiny blurb along the lines of "I’d like to add you to LinkedIn network."

Despite my expectations that one of the explanatory messages would be best,
the short, vague blurb outperformed by a huge margin.

~~~
dkersten
> getting new users to accept invites was incredibly important to us

So important that you resorted to every dark pattern in the book, it seems.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that I don't know any of my tech friends who
haven't had a bad experience with linkedin tricking them into spamming invites
or similar.

~~~
lpolovets
I'm very frustrated by dark patterns, too. IIRC those came well after I left
the company in 2005, and I'm disappointed they're there. I think trying to get
users to spam invites is especially annoying and lame:
[https://twitter.com/lpolovets/status/953059635522502656](https://twitter.com/lpolovets/status/953059635522502656)

~~~
dkersten
I'm glad you agree and weren't part of it! Apologies for suggesting you were.

------
mekoka
I suspect two things to be at work here (among possibly many):

\- First, reciprocity. If you send me an email with a one-liner, I will feel
that replying in kind would be adequate. A verbose email on the other hand,
may have the opposite effect of creating a feeling that I should also be more
detailed (which you may not even need). My response might be to set your email
aside with the purpose of addressing it _later when I have more time_ (we all
know that famously elusive promise of a future that never materializes).

\- The second point is slightly in line with the previous, but different. The
length of the message can be used to estimate the cost of a conversation. A
short message can be perceived to announce a one-off (cheap) exchange, whereas
a verbose message may seem like the beginning of a more involved (expensive)
one where if I engage, you will ask even more from me (how much exactly,
nobody knows). That uncertainty is uncomfortable enough that I may not want to
respond at all.

------
rubyron
It wasn’t just the length of the email body they changed in the 3rd variant...
they also changed the subject line from “Welcome to Netlify” to “Question...”,
but that change wasn’t mentioned as a potential contributor to the good
result.

I’m betting that change resulted in a big increase in open rate. I’m
conditioned to ignore “Welcome to AcmeCo”-style emails.

~~~
TameAntelope
FWIW I'm also conditioned to ignore emails that are vague. Honestly, at this
point I assume any unsolicited communication is a spear phishing attempt until
proven otherwise.

------
danenania
A corollary is that if you _do_ have to write a long email, try to start it
off with a short, 1-2 sentence intro paragraph that piques interest and pulls
people in to the rest of the text.

Even better, try to keep _all_ the paragraphs as short as possible. Each
paragraph has two jobs: to convey some information, and to convince the reader
to keep going to the next paragraph.

Done right, you can get someone to read a long text without it _feeling_ like
they read a lot, because you kept them curious about what comes next the whole
way through.

Kurt Vonnegut was a master of this technique. The vast majority his paragraphs
are very short. It's almost like prose poetry. You (semi-consciously) keep
thinking "I'll just read a few more lines" until you look up after 4 hours and
realize you're just a few pages from the end of a 300 page novel.

So it goes.

~~~
frosted-flakes
That's also how most newspaper articles are written. Short paragraphs, often
one sentence each.

Also, they're top-loaded with all the essential info, followed by a long tail
of lesser details as the article progresses (this tail can be cut short in
case of space constraints).

~~~
meristem
This is called “inverted pyramid”, use for journalism and other kinds of “show
me” writing.

------
austinl
The most effective recruiting emails I receive (in terms of how likely I am to
reply) are:

* Plain text

* Directly addressed to me from name@company.com

* 3-4 sentences max, slightly personalized

* Optionally have a link to the company career page/job listing (better if the raw link is pasted instead of embedded in text, to save me the time hover-checking it).

I'm more likely to reply because it feels like there's a real person on the
other end that "hand-wrote" this email. Not some amorphous system that crawled
my LinkedIn and sent me an automated message. Kudos to recruiters that are
doing this — doing the thing that doesn't scale to get an edge.

~~~
austinl
I should add that the key to good writing (in most domains) is to be
_concise_. Editing is primarily about cutting what's unnecessary, but it's
often treated like the part where some words are swapped out with fancier ones
(e.g. "use" to "utilize").

I'm a big fan of PG's essay, _Write Like You Talk_ , on this topic.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html)

------
gsoto
I feel like many times it's not that the message doesn't get read but that it
doesn't persuade the recipient to make the time to write a response.

Shortening the text not only transmits the message more efficiently, it also
allows the recipient to feel comfortable with writing a one-liner reply. You
are actually lowering the threshold over which the person gains the will to
start writing a response.

------
Pxtl
Now that everybody's remote, I think there's an important conversation about
respecting the reader's time that needs to happen.

1) Brevity.

2) Get your terminology _perfect_. Asynchronous "who's on first" _sucks_.

3) When discussing _anything_ on the web, start with a hyperlink. I can't see
your screen, I can't scroll or inspect your screenshots. Expecting the reader
to hunt down the resource that you had one ctrl-C, ctrl-V away is rude.

~~~
cutemonster
> Asynchronous "who's on first"

What does that mean? "On first"?

~~~
Pxtl
I just mean the repeated loops of miscommunication based on the fundamental
misunderstanding of a single word. "Who's on first?" is a comedy sketch where
two men are discussing a man named "who" and various other people with
misleading names.

I've run into many times where a person has said a similar but distinct term -
like they said "repo" when they mean "branch" and then burn 5 minutes of time
while two people are confused by the fact that nothing the other person says
makes sense.

It feels like the latency-time of writing makes shaking this mess out take 5X
longer than spoken conversation.,

~~~
cutemonster
Ok now I get it. Async Who's on first could take a whole month I suspect

------
davnicwil
I've recently launched [https://boxci.dev](https://boxci.dev) and have a
'leave your email if you have questions' box on the landing page.

People have been leaving their emails, but surprisingly, even though the
intent is very clear (I think), almost nobody has actually replied when I've
emailed to open the conversation. The kinds of response rate percentages
(<<10%) talked about in the article very much resonate!

My opening email is nothing like as long as the first one in this article, but
it does contain a generic intro paragraph (thanks for leaving your email, I'm
the founder, etc) which I include just for context and politeness, but which
I've realised from reading this article may be causing people to just stop
reading, thinking that it's an auto-generated response. I'll try some one
liners from now on and see how it works out!

~~~
knownhoot
I wonder how many of the users that complete the form mistake it for a
newsletter subscribe, as that's commonly where subscribe widgets live.

~~~
davnicwil
Yeah, great point, I think this might be the case. I'd been thinking perhaps a
chat widget or link to a slack channel or something might be more useful, and
clear in its purpose.

------
gre
This will work until everyone is sick of getting short emails asking for
feedback.

~~~
epistasis
My thoughts exactly... and also it will become harder to distinguish emails at
a glance.

A quick win for the first few spammers that do this, with the end result of
degrading the overall utility of email for everyone.

------
jmilloy
Right, so the way to get more replies is to convince the reader that they will
get a useful answer if they do reply.

One thing you can do is not bury the request (the offer to help) at the end of
the message.

Another thing you can do is make your automated message seem like it isn't
automated, and a shorter message and better subject helps. But I wonder if it
wouldn't be better to say "Yes, this is an automated message, but we read and
respond to every response". Why trick your users when you can just tell them
the truth?

------
kerkeslager
The opposite is also true: to get fewer, higher quality replies, say more.
Even if people do respond with low quality responses, it's easier to filter
them out because they say things that make no sense if they read the entirety
of what they are responding to.

Long-form articles posted to HN are a great example.

------
EGreg
Maybe if you made it a two word email and removed the signature it would get
16x the engagement. Or if you had an empty email and put the question in the
subject you’d get 32x engagement.

Attention spans these days are terrible.

~~~
mepiethree
Two word email:

Subject: Hey

Body: Whaddya want?

~~~
wilsonbright
Ha ha. This is the shortest!

------
ricardobeat
What about the effects on branding / user perception of the message? While the
first short email feels ok, the straight-shooter 'Hi, I can see you signed up,
what do you want from us?' version feels awkwardly impolite.

I find it still obvious that it is an automated message and the attempt at
'being human' makes it even less appealing. This kind of metric chasing most
likely results in dark patterns and subpar experiences.

~~~
gk1
Every company should find their balance between brand and optimization. Amazon
will implement practically any change that shows an improvement to some KPI,
while Nike would rather preserve their brand image at the cost of, say, lower
checkout rates.

------
janwillemb
I've noticed this too in emails to coworkers. If the email is long enough,
they just skip it to "read it later". This is quite frustrating, because
sometimes you just _have_ to communicate some more words.

~~~
skj
One of my managers gave me some guidelines here. If it's more than 100 words,
cap it at 100 and schedule a meeting. It clearly is information-dense to the
degree where a quick question/answer session will be helpful.

From my own experience, I make sure to never ask more than one question in an
email. If you ask more, people will answer the first and ignore the rest.

~~~
scott_s
I still find it useful to write those emails, even if I'm asking to talk to
someone. The email serves as an agenda, it forces me to reason through the
issue, and it serves as a long-term record of the issue. But the request for
the meeting should come _first_.

~~~
R0b0t1
I find reading the emails preferential to a meeting myself, but I guess a
meeting is sometimes the only way to get people to pay attention.

------
goldemerald
These results seems quite suspicious to me. In all instances the author only
received 1 email in reply. If you run these results through an A/B testing
calculator, they aren't statistically significant. That's even the case for
the 1% conversion compared to the shortest email 8% conversion. I like the
thesis statement that short emails convert users better, but the experimental
results certainly aren't strong enough to support that claim. I'd love to see
an updated version of the article now that 3 years have passed and see what
the conversion rate is.

~~~
leegraham
Maybe I misunderstood the article, but my impression is that the ‘ 4% (1 in 25
users)‘ is just to make the percentages more understandable and the author
didn’t only send the email to 100/25/12 users.

~~~
gk1
That's correct. I'm editing it to say "1 of every 25 users" to make this less
confusing. The actual sample size was quite large.

------
rajekas
I want to talk about the opposite problem - I routinely get 'personalized'
emails from the founder/CTO/VP for awesome sauce/ saying "Hey X, I noticed you
were able to turn on the light saber but never signed up for a friendly battle
with D. Vader. Hit reply to this email if you want to learn how to do so. We
read and respond to every email from our Jedi customers."

And if I like the service but find some aspect of it annoying, I spend half an
hour composing a thoughtful response to said email. Nine times out of ten it's
crickets. Of course it was a mass email sent to zillions of budding saber
rattlers but the lack of acknowledgement, let alone a proper reply, sours me
on the service for ever.

------
Guest19023892
I know I have a difficult time responding to long emails. When someone (friend
or business) sends me a short email, there's a good chance I'll reply right
away if it'll only take a minute. Now, if they send a long email, well, I'm
not interested in stopping everything and spending 15 minutes writing it out.
So, it goes on the to-do list for later. This keeps getting pushed back again
and again, and sometimes never gets done.

I remember when I used online dating sites this was also the case. If I wrote
someone a long message, asking a number of questions, it would rarely get a
reply. However, if I literally wrote one or two sentences with a single, easy
to answer question, I'd get a reply 50% of the time.

------
chiefalchemist
One of life's absolute truths:

"You don't learn when you're the one doing the talking."

I cringe when I hear someone talking about a fancy over-designed email. Where
the content is all about the brand and close to zero empathy for the receiver.
It's 2020, yes?

------
iflp
> Even if you follow all the best practices around emails, genuinely want to
> help them, and spend a long time writing a personalized email, people still
> don’t respond.

How do you write a personalized email for a new user?

~~~
gsoto
Hi, ${user_name}! How do you like our product?

We are working hard on ${first_clicked_link}.

BTW, ${user_browser} rules!

~~~
dgut
That last part is just creepy.

"Your location (${location}) is near mountain X, we should go hiking one day."

------
dennisgorelik
1) Netlify traffic dropped 4x in May 2020 [1]

2) Email - is very small part of Netlify traffic (0.99%).

3) $97.1M funding. Last round - $53M on Mar 4, 2020 [2]

[1]
[https://www.similarweb.com/website/netlify.com](https://www.similarweb.com/website/netlify.com)

[2]
[https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organ...](https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organizations/funding_total/netlify)

~~~
chimen
I'm one of those that dropped and moved to Firebase. The monthly payments were
topping somewhere at $130 for a static website with 700-800 daily visitors and
Netlify was starting to corner me into paying extra for every little detail
possible. I clearly felt that onboarding was off and it's time to milk every
cent.

~~~
lebaux
Funnily enough, they slashed their prices 3 days ago.
[https://www.netlify.com/blog/2020/07/21/netlify-expands-
pric...](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2020/07/21/netlify-expands-pricing-
options-more-value-for-developers-and-enterprise-teams/)

------
owaty
I would find it quite annoying to get any of those emails.

When I give you my email, it's not because I actually want to hear from you;
it's because you've made it the only — or the least shady — way to sign up. I
do not want to hear from you or answer your questions, especially before I've
decided that I like your product and care about it.

So any such email I immediately mark as junk, and the fact that you sent it to
me will go the "cons" column when evaluating your product vs the competitors.

~~~
chimen
Life must be really hard if you get to that point where a welcome email coming
from a service you signed up for a trial is so "annoying" that you
"immediately mark as junk".

------
khazhoux
This applies to internal emails, especially requests to management chain.
Whenever possible, aim to keep emails to two lines/sentences max, and put the
request always first.

~~~
codingdave
This depends on your management. If they trust you, and typically give you
what you need, sure.. request first. But if they are more the kind where it is
like pulling teeth to make changes or get more resources, then no - first you
need to establish the reasons behind your need, explain the negative impact to
the team, propose a solution, and explain how it will benefit the broader
organization. You still need to do that all concisely, which is a challenge.

I've used that pattern in emails quite a bit since our company was bought a
few years ago, and it works far more reliably than when I just send off a
short request.

~~~
khazhoux
Sure, context matters. But an important lesson I learned only after 10+ years
in the industry is that senior execs slice their time and mind-share very
thinly. As a very junior engineer I would send out paragraphs explaining the
background of an issue, discussions so far, proposals, etc, and sometimes I
wouldn't even have an actual request. And then wonder why I got no reply.

------
ternaus
Every book that about better writing that I read, talks about this.

Cut all the clutter, use simpler words, be personal. Do not write in a way
that you do not talk.

For example, first few chapters of the book

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53343.On_Writing_Well](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53343.On_Writing_Well)

talk in details on the topic.

~~~
meristem
The issue of “use simpler words” is important: average reading age in U.S. is
7th grade. I have seen suggestions that indicate 5th grade reading level is
the best benchmark to use.

------
carabiner
To get more responses to your surveys, make your surveys shorter. The massive
response rate will make up for the loss in granularity; most of the
granularity is not actionable anyway. The tricky thing is that some huge, in-
depth survey looks better to your manager, whereas the simple one looks lazily
developed.

~~~
jtth
If the response to a question isn't actionable, it's a bad question, not a
problem with the question's granularity.

------
lucaswb
I also wonder how much of this is that shorter emails look more like a real
person. I have to deal with enough spam and try-my-product emails that I
delete emails at the first sent of "sales".

I would be more inclined to the shorter email which looks more like a person
actually typed it.

------
thesz
The converse is also true. Say more to have less replies.

When writing business email, be an epistolary writer. Imagine what you vis-a-
vis will feel or do or need at the moment they receive your letter and address
that.

Basically, to have less replies is to save time for you and your
correspondence. They will not take [1] their time answering with questions and
you will have more time not answering their mail.

This is where programming (and business) needs empathy in full.

[1] I thought about using "waste" there but declined that after some
consideration. They will not waste their time creating a reply to you -
because they'll show you your shortcomings. But they will be more productive
in case you hit all the spots and your email does not need to be answered.

------
overcast
This applies to internal email as well, no on reads your essays. Keep it
short, bullet points if possible, and don't request responses to more than one
or two questions at a time.

Seriously though, no one reads your email.

------
Shorn
I really want to do this. But considering my product is effectively a service
to help deal with unsolicited mail - sending unsolicited email about on-
boarding feels wrong.

I decided not to do it (after sending one, doh >.<). After sending that first
one, I thought about it and I don't really like receiving unsolicited on-
boarding messages.

Though I am going to build something into my on-boarding process so that
people can opt-in for these.

------
dutchoven
Nice!This is insightful and actionable.

This reminded me of Scott Adams' advice on writing too:
[https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/08/22/the-day-you-
became...](https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/08/22/the-day-you-became-a-
better-writer-2nd-look/)

------
tijuco2
This article led me to another one about email designing which states that
plain text emails get more clicks than those with fancy templates. I can
relate to that. Every time a see a see an email in plain text I stop to check
what it is.

------
mesaframe
Will this work for freelancing proposal?

Will this work for about/cover letter/bio?

~~~
mepiethree
IMO, a brief, thoughtful note is one of the highest-value things that a
candidate can do.

Hiring for a small startup, I am looking for connection. So when I review job
applications, I will _always_ read a three-sentence cover letter that is
tailored to my company, but _never_ read a page-long cover letter that is
obviously copy-pasted. So if someone wanted to get a job at Kevala, it would
behoove them to spend 5 minutes reading our website.

------
synlatexc
Key point here is that most people fail to consider the reader.

------
d23
Ha, I'm sure if this became widespread, you'd start seeing the opposite, where
people only expect longform emails to come from humans.

------
kyle_morris_
Has there been an analysis of comment length and replies/upvotes?

I've got to assume the length of your comment correlates with engagement.

------
daguar
This is neat! That said, I don't think the statistical size makes this a
conclusion you can draw:

\- "a reply rate of 1% (1 in 100 users)"

\- "a reply rate of 4% (1 in 25 users)"

\- "a reply rate of 8% (1 in 12 users)"

Sorry to say but... we really can't draw a conclusion like this strictly from
these kinds of numbers.

Totally possible these conclusions ARE true, but I'd test at a bigger scale
and/or with qualitative research with users.

~~~
gk1
The sample size was more than big enough to get a significant result. (Netlify
was very popular even in 2017.)

"1 in 100" = "one in every 100"

~~~
daguar
Ahh thanks for clarifying!

------
stareatgoats
Boy are people stressed nowadays.

------
javier123454321
Imagine if they just wrote "sup?"

------
jjclarkson
tldr: people don't read lengthy text.

~~~
criddell
If I'm not expecting the email I generally won't read it unless I know the
person who wrote it.

It's part of the reason I think the mailing list gold rush has peaked and will
probably decline. I don't know many people that want more email.

------
recursivedoubts
Interesting.

------
stuff4ben
Let me give you some advice...talk less, smile more, don't let them know what
you're against or what you're for. Until that is you get their attention, then
make the deal. Cuz if you want to get ahead, fools who run their mouths off
wind up dead (broke).

~~~
cutemonster
> don't let them know what you're against or what you're for

Why not?

~~~
owaty
It's a quote from Hamilton, the musical.

~~~
cutemonster
Thanks for explaining. (Here I found some people's thoughts about that phrase:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/5y81cw/talk_less_sm...](https://www.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/5y81cw/talk_less_smile_more_dont_let_them_know_what/)
)

