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Ending Emails With Certain Variation Of Thank You Vastly Improves Response Rate, Study Finds (inc.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Inc article: The folks at Boomerang, a plug-in for scheduling emails, did a little study to see how the language people use to close their emails has any effect on the response rate. "We looked at closings in over 350,000 email threads," data scientist Brendan Greenley wrote on the Boomerang blog, "And found that certain email closings deliver higher response rates." But do all emails need a response? Not necessarily. That's why Boomerang ran a variation of the test that looked at threads whose initial email contained a question mark, meaning the initiator of the conversation was likely looking for a reply. The answer? Those that express gratitude. "Emails that closed with a variation of thank you got significantly more responses than emails ending with other popular closings," Greenley writes. Here are the exact numbers: Emails that ended in Thanks in advance had a 65.7% response rate. Of emails that ended in Thanks, 63.0% got responses. The third most effective closing was Thank you with a 57.9% response rate. Boomerang has shared the kind of emails it accessed and how.
Being blunt, rude, pushy, etc. fails far more often than it works in my experience, being somebody who by nature is "straight forward". The few times it has worked it usually creates a longer-term resentment; i.e. burning bridges.
That's why a certain political figure has puzzled me. He's done the opposite of what both my parents and experience have taught in terms of getting along and cooperation. Yet, it got him far (so far).
I don't get it. Maybe in some cases tribalism trumps manners (no pun intended).
Table-ized A.I.
I find near 100% results if I open with "Would you kindly..."
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I don't consider myself old (early 30s). I sometimes say "no problem" or "no worries" in response to a thank you ... but specifically, it's when I'm doing something to fix something that someone else did, or cover for them, that sort of thing. In other words, I'm trying to communicate that it wasn't a problem for me to help them out.
As opposed to responding to thankfulness for something "nice" or "kind," which would get something along the lines of the traditional "you're welcome."
Using the restaurant example, I wouldn't expect "no problem" to a "thank you" unless they were like, cleaning up something I spilled or something. If I said thank you for them bringing my food to the table and they said "no worries," that'd be a bit weird.
So yeah, I view it as being some what more communicative. It's not just "you're welcome," it's "no problem, don't worry about it/feel bad, it wasn't a big deal." Which doesn't make sense in all contexts, but I think it does in some.
"You're welcome" can come across as slightly arrogant. As in, "you are right to show gratitude for the generosity I have shown". Conversely, "no problem" and "no worries" can be interpreted as "no need to thank me, any reasonable person would have done the same" and conveys humility.
I suspect I'm not the only one who feels some variant of this, whether it is conscious or not. probably due to people of the previous generations using "you're welcome" pointedly when people forget to say thank you.