I just sent out an e-mail to ficb-chat about filling out a marketing survey, and sending out these e-mails always makes me evaluate how people react to e-mail.

Here's my breakdown:

1) I think the most important thing in an e-mail is it's title. If my title were to sound like other spam, people wouldn't even bother opening it, especially if they use web-based e-mail like hotmail or yahoo (since those services don't come with preview panes).

2) One thing I made sure to do was to make the e-mail as short as possible... if I'm going to ask people for a favor, it makes sense that I would spend as little of their time as possible. Plus, I needed to reassure them that the survey wouldn't take long, by citing a maximum number of minutes. Saying "a few minutes" doesn't work as well as "5 minutes" because there's no guarantee with how long "a few minutes" is.

3) Another thing is to provide fool-proof directions. But I have to keep in mind that I need to make the e-mail as short as possible, so this is a bit of a challenge.

4) Also need to make sure there's plenty of white space in the e-mail. Hitting the return key a whole bunch of times makes the e-mail so much easier to read.

5) Numbering steps is also helpful, like I've done here.

6) Finally, thanking them is always a nice touch. I don't want to sound like I'm forcing them to do anything.

Wow... I'm such a geek... most of this is from what I learned in my business communication class a few semesters ago. But the most disturbing thing is that I do this type of analysis with every e-mail and blog I write.