Communicating Persuasively, Email or Face-to-Face?

Jeremy Dean writes "Our intuitive understanding is that face-to-face communication is the most persuasive. In reality, of course, it's not always possible to meet in person, so email wins out. How, then, do people react to persuasion attempts over email? Persuasion research has uncovered fascinating effects: that men seem more responsive to email because it bypasses their competitive tendencies (Guadagno & Cialdini, 2002). Women, however, may respond better in face-to-face encounters because they are more 'relationship-minded'. But is this finding just a gender stereotype?"

Comments

Just try being a telecommuting director some time

[unfortunateson]

I telecommute to a company six hundred miles away, and persuasion by email is impossible.

I send proposal after proposal, request for comment after request, but most of my coworkers -- which are located in the same facility -- see non-customer emails as the lowest priorities, and consider them pretty much ignorable.

My boss (non pointy haired, but not much better) included.

And I'm a pretty persuasive writer (maybe not this message).
But if it doesn't get read, it doesn't get responded to.

So at least once a month, I have to commute to what has become my least favorite airport in the US, just to get a face-to-face decision or committment.

Re:Email has failed

[blahplusplus]

"Email has failed"

Speak for yourself buddy. Email and IM are enormous boons to keeping in contact and making friends who share common interests across the world, what is slashdot if not a giant email discussion list in the form of a bulletin board?

The real problem I believe is that email isn't personal enough and good videocamera's integrated into computers for "email" the next big thing is vloging or "vlogging" if someone finally made a workable video phone with optional image broadcast with a decent display and ratio adjuster, that just worked everywhere. It would sell, believe you me.

Learned early and from my mother...

[bifodus]

...that you can't communicate effectively unless you can get an entire point across without interruption. If I need to actually persuade someone, nothing makes more sense than email. With verbal communication, the listener can butt-in whenever they feel like it, and do many things to ultimately conceal my point.

I'd think

[ucblockhead]

It'd depend more on the person trying to do the persuading. Who hasn't met someone who in person has great charisma but writes emails like "so dude u shd totally do it it rocks!!!!" Who hasn't met someone who in person fumbles around with speech full of "ums" and "uhs", but writes clear, concise and persuasive emails?

Re:Perhaps another interesting question applicable

[MightyYar]

Mod this guy waaaay up... the key to getting better working with people is NOT to hide behind a computer. If persuasion is your goal, the guy going face-to-face will always beat out the guy exclusively using email. That is why the world still has salesmen.

Re:Perhaps another interesting question applicable

[timeOday]

I think you have a point about writing being better thought out. The problem is, some people simply don't work that way. I know a couple guys at work to whom I just don't bother writing detailed emails, because every time I've tried, it's obvious they simply don't read them, no matter how important they are and how well I craft the language.

Similarly, I used to wonder why people travel to expensive training courses when you can get all the same information from a book - which is usually better organized and from a more authoritative source, anyways. But I've realized, many people simply do not, and will not, sit down and master the information in a book to save their lives. Even successful people. You have to sit them in a room with minimal distractions and engage them face to face.