It turns out, your mother was right. A little gratitude goes a long way—especially when it comes to email.
Boomerang, makers of an email plug-in, analyzed more than 350,000 email threads to see which closing garnered the highest response rate.
Emails that closed with some form of “thank you” pulled in the highest response rates at 62%, according to a post on the BoomerangApp.com blog written by Brendan Greenley.
And of the grateful closings, “thanks in advance” received the highest response (65.7%), “which makes sense, as the email’s recipient is being thanked specifically for a response which has yet to be written,” Greenley writes. “There’s a bit of posturing involved with this closing, but it turns out it works pretty well.”
Here’s the complete list of closings they analyzed and their corresponding response rates. Apparently “best” isn’t best, after all.
- Thanks in advance—65.7%
- Thanks—63%
- Thank you—57.9%
- Cheers—54.4%
- Kind regards—53.9%
- Regards—53.5%
- Best regards—52.9%
- Best—51.2%
