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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.
You heard "Merry Christmas" more this year than in previous years? It seems like it wasn't too many years that Bill O'Reilly invented the "War on Christmas". Comedians had fun mocking him because, you know, everybody still said Merry Christmas despite his angry rants to the contrary. I guess all it took was an even angrier man to claim even louder that there was a war on Christmas---but don't worry, we won!---before everybody "remembers" it actually happening. I guess next week we'll all suddenly remember how we've always been at war with Eastasia, whereas Eurasia has always been our ally. If we're lucky, unemployment might even drop to 15%!
I, like most every non-unicorn-riding American, have no problem with the phrase Merry Christmas. However, if a store clerk told me to have a "blessed day", it would probably evoke the same feelings in me as if said clerk stared inappropriately at my daughter.