Email myths you should stop believing now

We all have a different email ritual, maybe you believe sending emails early in the morning is better than sending them late at night, or maybe you CC as many people as possible and hope to get a response. Over 500 000 emails were involved in a study to pick out the true and false email myths, take a look:

Myth: Monday is the best day to send an email
Truth: Sorry, but Mondays are still useless

Studies have shown that email rates are actually a lot higher on the weekend, most likely because people take it slow and have a lot more time to sit down, relax and reply. Believe it or not, but during the week the email reply rates are the same every day.

So what’s with the whole Monday-is-the-best-day-to-send-an-email story? Perhaps it’s because it’s the beginning of the work week and people want to catch up on all their emails and then get back to their responsibilities at work. If you think about it the days of the week actually make no difference.

Myth: Emails get faster responses in the morning
Truth: Well, slightly

If you know your audience that can decide what time you decide to send your emails, but the studies show that emails sent between 6am and 7am have much quicker responses. However so were emails sent at 8pm in the evening, about 40% of emails sent around those times got a response.

Myth: Subject lines should always be short
Truth: It actually doesn't matter

The subject line attracts the reader in; it’s kind of like a headline for your email. The study shows that the length of the subject line didn't actually have an impact on the open and reply rate, but that doesn't mean that your subject line should be an essay – keep it short and sweet. 

The words with the highest open and reply rates are: “steps”, “campaign” and “next”. The worst words to put in a subject line are “calendar” and “online” so if you’re planning on sending everyone your online calendar, don’t, because they’re apparently not interested.

Myth: Adding multiple recipients gets a faster reply
Truth: That’s not going to work

Just because you send your email to more people, doesn't mean that you’ll get more responses. The study shows that putting one person in the “To” field, and “CC”-ing all the other people gets a 10% higher reply rate. When you do this the one person feels forced to reply, because they’re the top recipient.

Maybe you’re still writing insanely long subject lines or you insist on always checking your emails first thing in the morning, we all have our email myths that we choose to be convinced by, but which you stop believing in is up to you.

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Written By: Christine Romans
Copy Writer at The Computer Guyz Cape Town