The Psychological Cost of Answering an Email

You’re not getting as many replies to your messages as you’d like. Why is that?

Well, there may be many reasons, but I’m discussing one of them here. It’s the psychological cost of processing an email and acting upon it. My hypothesis is simple:

The higher the psychological cost of answering an email, the lower the response rate.

This means that don’t make people think (the same principle applies in UX design!).

So, if you propose a meeting time, don’t give many choices — only give one, if that’s not okay let them process it further (by that time the processing has already begun, it’s like a bait).

If you give many choices, the person has to think between them; also, he knows he still has to wait for your reply which is far higher psychological cost than just replying “ok”.

Remember, even if it wouldn’t seem like much, people get so much email that any marginal increase of complexity is likely to sway them for answering immediately and therefore postponing or even ignoring the message.

Any addition of cognitive effort will reduce the reply rates of your emails. As you’ll be sending many of them throughout your career, non-replies and delays add up and hinder your ability to achieve your goals in a timely manner. Therefore, learning how to write great emails is a hugely important skill. And one way to go about it reducing the psychological cost of the recipient.

Joni Salminen holds a PhD in marketing from the Turku School of Economics. His research interests relate to startups, platforms, and digital marketing.