The EveryJoe blog shares a tactic that might just make your emails tighter, more direct, and less prone to Oops-Forgot-To-Add Syndrome: reversing the composition order. As in attachments first, recipients last.
Why would one dare to break the order of tab-button-friendly, top-to-bottom email writing? EveryJoe cites conference presenter Robby Slaughter as offering up this kind of explanation:
2. Write Body - The body of the message in this case with attached files should be a simple statement of what action you would like the recipient to take on the attached files. Should they review them, are they to be printed for the upcoming seminar? State specifically what you want the reader to do in your email.
3. Write Subject - Write the subject after the body because it should be a simple, stripped-down restatement of the body of the message. Clear and concise with key words at the beginning of the subject.
This might not make sense for every email you're knocking out, because you can usually keep a short subject and your two-line text in your head while choosing addresses. But for emails where you're really trying to say something, Slaughter might be right on—as they say in journalism class, if you can't write a tight headline, you probably don't grasp your story(/body) well enough.
Brilliant little tweak? Solution in need of a problem? Sound off in the comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment