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DISCLAIMER:IT IS NOT A SELF HELP/ TUTORIAL OR A TRICK TO WRITE KICK-ASS MAIL. IT IS A DISCOURSE.
In the age of 140 characters tweets and wittier one liner status, writing a mail becomes difficult. For reasons unknown, we have evolved from the usual salutations of Dear and Respected to a more relaxed “Greetings”, “Hello” or simply “Hi.”
Mailing albeit has become obsolete in the world of Facebook, Whatsapp, Slack and other platforms which provide much more than sharing a text,memo, resume, articles or funny videos. In the early 2000s, writing a mail was one of the most interesting experience on the internet (And GTalk and Yahoo Messenger for the chatty kathy). Back then, it was regarded as a formal mode of communication and still remains one of the sacred medium of employee banter in the offices. But gradually with the advent of mailing ad-campaigns and the rise of S.P.A.M (Scams,Ponzi, Advertisement, Mailfraud)(Some Pretty Amazing Music is my personal favourite spam), the sacred mail became not so sacred and as good things come to an end, they were taken over by better productivity communication channels.
But on certain days when we need to approach someone formally for a job or share our lab practicals over with colleagues from different batches, the long forgotten mail comes to the rescue.
So what to do while adapting to the new age where the average attention span of a person is ruled by the finger sliding down the newsfeed, it becomes all more difficult to hold the person to your subject for the first line is not the actual mail body but the salutation.
Here are some ways which I found helpful in treading the fine line between the Good and the Bad (of course some outcomes have been ugly and resulted in loss of a job opportunity ,funding and a book deal)
- Job Opportunity: If you are mailing directly to the CEO/CTO or a Tech Lead, stroking their ego will work in 90% of the cases and a more formal approach with Dear/ Respected would be the best way to begin your each and every mail. It shows that you respect them for taking time out from their busy schedules(of playing Online Poker) and you earn their attention for 3 or 4 more lines. A Hi/Hello would come off as conversational and with that one single word, you might loose out to some other person. (Or if you are in India and GEM i.e General category Engineering Male, you should already buy that fake poison shown on TV shows and take a rebirth)
- A Long Rant: Long rants are typical in the IT industry where people are resigning from their jobs up and down the hill over 365 days for better opportunities,further studies and just for the heck of it(I do fall in the last category after my previous job). These types of mails are typical and are fun to read and require no salutation. But then quoting the “Art of War” as your first line might make your hiring manager proud. In these cases, its not the first line that matters but the concluding ones and if you still have that boring signature of XYZ Team, BLah BLah corp then it defeats the purpose of the mail.
- Professors: If you are getting the boot for some mischief you played, you better go old school and write a letteresque mail and apologize the dissertation out of that mail but if you are asking for some material or you get a John Keating of a teacher, you can begin with the wonderful poetry you have been meaning to discuss or a discuss the repercussions of cicadas of the east, you can be informal with them as long as they share the same rapport.
- Future Investors/Book Publishers: There are a new breed of humans growing in the world and no they are not the descendants of wrinkled old sack,they are the VCs or the new age Angels. They swoop in with their wisdom and market expertise and throw around money in order to get on the early stages of a profitable venture or idea(or anything, the startup bubble is starting to reach its panic stage, Minsky you genius basket!)Also joining them are book publishers (Unless you are the Penguin)with a current trend that every 3rd book on the shelf is a Best Seller in X countries already.Approaching them is difficult. Yours hands tremble. Each word needs to be straight out of Steve Job’s speech but in reality they end up like this. Try to throw around some sane words and keeping overachieving in check, simple humble requests with honest facts might earn you a place in their good books or as they say in startup culture avoid getting in their Anti-Portfolios.
- Customer Care: If you are mailing any kind of customer care representative, skip the salutation and jump straight to “My Order No is 7676767676” or “This is in reference to ticket no.123455”. These mails are usually scrapped by the CRM softwares which are first decoded by the software and an automated response is waiting the click of your Send button.
Post Disclaimer:There are many more to add to this list but dis-course is provided for free.Y’all need to show some love to get me to write more and cut down on watching The Wire and rather read The Wire.