How to Craft Emails That Get Read

Follow these tips and other strategies to help get your message through

An email icon on a smart phone

When speaking with students about pursuing academic goals or finding potential mentors, Candis Watts Smith, Duke Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and a Professor of Political Science, often hears how difficult it can be to get email responses from faculty members.

With hundreds of emails flowing through her inbox on most days, Smith can see why students may not get messages back quickly and why faculty may feel overwhelmed when they check their inboxes.

“Over the years, email has become a really key way that people communicate all sorts of things,” Smith said. “Messages can get lost nowadays in a way that they didn’t five or 10 years ago because there’s so much more in everybody’s inbox.”

According to data published last year by Statista, global users will send an estimated 376 billion emails per day in 2025. So when sending messages to users who, like Smith, have especially busy inboxes, how can you craft emails that stand a good chance of getting a response?

Some of Duke’s email experts share strategies for how they make their emails stand out.

Craft Compelling Subject Lines

Executive Assistant Nathalia Davis

For the past five years, Executive Assistant Nathalia Davis has helped oversee the email inbox of Rhonda Brandon, the Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer for Duke University Health System. With a steady flow of meeting requests, reminders and questions to sort through, Davis said she appreciates informative subject lines.

By making it clear in the subject line what the goal of an email is, and providing a small bit of information, Davis said she can better understand which messages need quick responses and which ones can be addressed once other priorities are handled.

For instance, if an email is about scheduling a meeting, Davis might start the subject line with the words “Meeting request” followed by a colon and a brief description of the subject to be discussed.

“When I send emails, I make sure the reason for the email is in the subject line,” Davis said. “Am I requesting a resumé? Asking a question about hybrid work? Reminding someone to submit an assessment? If I put these things in there, it will help an email get answered because people will know what they’re looking at and what they need to do.”

Keep it Skimmable

Senior Learning & Organization Development Consultant Don Shortslef

When sending emails early in his career, James Wilson, a Staff Assistant in Duke Human Resources’ Rewards & Recognition team, wanted to give as much context as possible so readers would understand what he was he was asking about.

“I was very word-heavy,” Wilson said. “But within my first year, I started to see what worked and what didn’t. Now, I want to be quick and concise, not too wordy, and respectful of people’s time,”

Duke Learning & Organization Development’s Don Shortslef, a Senior Learning & Organization Development Consultant who teaches courses on communication, said loading emails down with a series of long paragraphs makes it more likely the recipient will misunderstand the message or delay responding until they have more time to process it.

Clearly stating the purpose or what you’re asking for in the first sentence or two of the email and including only essential contextual information, helps the recipient quickly understand and respond to the request. Attach documents or link to resources if more context is needed. And if a response is time-sensitive, mention the deadline explicitly.

An email of 75 to 100 words generally gets high response, while an email longer than roughly 200 words may see declining engagement, according to email marketing organizations.

“Think about ordering and limiting the information you’re trying to send somebody,” Shortslef said. “We don’t have time to read through long paragraphs. You want to be concise and structured in a way where you can get to the point and let people know why you’re reaching out.”

When to Send

Staff Assistant James Wilson

When Wilson needs to send an email in the afternoon – usually after around 3 p.m. – he knows it’s unlikely he’ll get a response that day.

“At a certain time, people tend to begin to mentally shut down and think, ‘I’ll handle this tomorrow,’” Wilson said.

Emails sent in the morning have a better chance of being opened than ones late in the day.

To give your email higher odds of getting noticed, it’s smart to send it in the morning when colleagues are settling in.

Davis, the Executive Assistant, said she’ll occasionally write emails in the afternoon, but schedule them to be sent early the next morning to keep them from getting overlooked.

Friendly Reminders

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Professor of Political Science Candis Watts Smith

Based on her conversations with students about the sometimes sluggish pace of communications with busy faculty members over email, Smith, the  Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Professor of Political Science, took to her LinkedIn page to author a post in defense of the “ping.”

Smith explained that, if an email goes unanswered for a period of time, it’s OK to send a follow-up to remind the recipient of the request. While the sender may feel like they’re being pushy, Smith said these “pings,” “nudges” or “friendly reminders” are often welcomed by the busy people who get them.

“Quite frankly, I often think of the ping as a favor to the receiver,” Smith said. “We all have a lot of responsibilities and sometimes the ping is a friendly reminder, and we all need friendly reminders from time to time.”

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