To get a busy person’s attention, write so your email takes less than two minutes to read and process.
You can learn the techniques journalists have refined over a century: headline, lead, nut, inverted pyramid.
Headline: pithy hint to what’s meaningful and actionable in this story. You call this the Subject line. Learn to write good headlines. Use your daily news sources as your model.
Lead: in fewer than 35 words, tell your reader what they will learn. A brilliant lead previews who, what, when where, why, how. A useful and adequate lead will preview many of these.
Nut paragraph: summarizes the email. Think of it as an abstract to scientific article or an elevator pitch. Everything the reader needs to know is expressed here. The rest is details and commentary.
Inverted pyramid: the details and commentary expressed in order of importance from most to least.
It looks easier than it is. Watch for this structure in your daily reading. You’ll start to appreciate news stories more, and likely pay more attention the bylines. .
OpenBook has brought this technique into some of its clients’ business cultures.
Check out this story for more ideas: http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2012/02/stop-email-overload-1.html
How did I do in this post? .