Get Busy People to Answer Your Emails and Do Stuff for You

Angel investor Jason Cohen advises what to do and not do when reaching out to busy strangers over email. He gets dozens of emails a day from people wanting advice, time, for him to tweet something, for him to blog about something. Most he marks as spam, but he does answer a few. He’s got great tips and he also gives a ton of examples of people who have reached out to him successfully (and some examples that didn’t work). This is really well done. Bookmark it.

1. Keep it short (“Anything longer than 150 words means you’ve assigned me a project.”)

2. Have a realistic call to action (“It has to be clear, sensible, and something that I plausibly would agree to do.”)

3. Don’t be a stranger (“When I get email from someone I recognize from blog comments or Twitter interactions, I almost always help out with advice, spreading the word, anything.”)

4. Make me excited (“An easy way to get me automatically more excited is to dovetail whatever you’re doing with whatever I’m doing.”)

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