{Email | Post #6}: Time is money.

I could hear the clock ticking. Literally. I had just sent an email to 25 leads and could not stop refreshing the browser, impatiently checking if anyone was even opening it. A couple people did, but not until the following day.

Time is money. 90% of all replies happen during the first day after an email is sent out. If all you got during that first day was radio silence, your chances of getting a reaction after sun sets is quickly approaching zero. Pulling the trigger at the right time on a carefully crafted email has the power to take it to the next level. It is easy to understand why.

With people receiving hundreds of emails every day, from senders in different countries and timezones, most inboxes are permanently congested. You wake up to a full inbox and you go to bed to a full inbox.

If you want your email to be read, you need to find a way for it to sit at the top of that pile. And the best way to achieve that is to send it out when most people are quiet. As in work-quiet.

Think sunrise and sunset. Pressing 'send' either really early (5 am to 6 am) or around dinner time (7 pm to 8 pm) will increase the chances of your emails being opened and replied to. Also, avoid weekends.

Scanning emails, not reading. Most people do not read emails. They look at them. They skim. As fast as possible. To find any cues that help decide what to do next. Reply? Delete? Later?

The way you style your emails is as important as what goes in them. Making them easy to scan may well be the difference between getting something or nothing out of your efforts.

Next time you write an email, consider employing:

• Bullet points: displaying the really important, informative parts of your email as bullet points will make those stand out;
• Short paragraphs: in this era of short attention spans, nothing is a bigger turn-off than long paragraphs. Break the info down into smaller, easy-to-digest chunks;
• Double-spaces: long blocks of text are unappealing. Adding double spaces between paragraphs helps the reader quickly cover most of the content;
• Bold & Underline: use these, together with bullet points, to emphasize important parts of the text;
• Signature: email signatures should not be neglected, they are a great way to brand your message and provide useful links for people to learn more.

It is time for me to come clean. Your first email will not lead to much. You may get the opens, but will you get the responses? 80% of the times, it will take you at least 4 emails to get anything out of this.

I know you feel like the King of emailing already. But to earn my respect you will also need to become the master of follow ups. That will not happen today. But it will next week.