????如果你希望電子郵件能有效地傳遞信息，那么就一定要去揣摩讀者的心態。

????亞馬遜（Amazon）上關于“商務寫作”方面的書將近有6,000種，再讓你讀這方面的相關內容，你或許會覺得難以理解。不過，一旦你把從書中學到的付諸實際，你就會發現你的郵件仍然無法實現那個最終的目標——讓讀者作出你想要的回應。一封出色的電子郵件能夠說服讀者采取特定的行動，比如：批準一份投資方案、提供信息、同意提供一份證明或者接受邀請等。因此，如果你的郵件無法讓讀者按照你的希望采取行動，你就浪費了別人和自己的時間。

????以下是能幫你寫好郵件的七個建議，這些都是從我擔任戰略顧問的25年經驗中總結而來。這七大訣竅有一個共同點，那就是都非常注重揣摩閱讀者的心理。為什么這一點非常重要？在對方收到你發出的郵件后，他就會馬上在心里將你的郵件進行分揀歸類，很有可能就歸入了那些糟糕的類目下，比如：“忽略并歸類為垃圾郵件”、“以后再讀”、“現在讀，但不采取行動”等等。而顯然，你所期望的是對方將你的郵件歸類為“現在看并馬上采取行動”。

????如果想要你的閱讀者做出積極的回應，懂一點社會心理學和行為經濟學會對你有所幫助。具體來說，關于這兩個領域的一些基礎知識，有兩本書非常值得一讀。第一本是羅伯特?希爾蒂尼（Robert Cialdini）的《影響力：說服的心理學》（Influence:The Psychology of Persuasion），這本書對順從行為進行了心理學分析，即什么因素能讓一個人答應他人的要求；另外一本是由理查德?塞勒（Richard Thaler）和卡斯?孫斯坦因（Cass Sunstein）合著的《推動力》（Nudge），這本書對各種系統進行了分析，幫助人們提高作出對自身更為有利選擇的能力。雖然這兩本書本身不涉及商務寫作，但是包含了一些非常實用的相關理論。在這些理論的基礎上，我總結出了以下的建議，它們與你在別的地方學到的那些常見的商務寫作技巧，比如“避免使用被動語態”、“避免使用行業術語和縮略語”、“變換語句的長度和結構”等，將互為補充。

????下面就說說這七個建議。

????技巧1：要考慮到你的上司會在何時何地閱讀你的郵件。在當今這個快節奏的時代，以字節信息為載體的高速通訊可以隨時隨地實現。因此，寫完了一封電子郵件之后，你也許會忍不住馬上發給對方，而這也很容易實現。但是，請考慮一下對方會在何時何地收到你的郵件。舉個例子，如果你想要給老板發封郵件，申請請兩個月的假，那么周五晚上就不會是一個很好的時間點。這個時候，你的上司正被困在擁擠的機場，等著晚點的飛機帶他回家；在此之前，他剛剛與工會代表進行了長達三天的緊張談判，結果不歡而散。你的請假申請也許理由萬般充分，措辭流暢有力，但是你不妨多等一會，讓你的電子郵件在一個更好的時間和地點進入上司的收件箱。

????技巧2：利用主題線索讓郵件在收件箱中更為顯眼。商務人士都非常忙，因此他們無法為作出一項決定花費太多時間。所以，他們往往是根據過去的經驗，或者僅僅根據呈現給他們的一條書面線索就下意識地作出決定。首先是給電子郵件擬定標題，這不難做到。標題要讓閱讀郵件的人感到這是機會，并且會有好處，而不是要他們費力做什么事情，或者謀求他們給予恩惠。例如，你要寫一封邀請別人參加基準管理培訓的電子郵件，如果標題含有類似“學習”這樣的字眼，就會讓人產生“如何提高績效”之類讓人不安的聯想。更高深的技巧是，要拉近郵件閱讀者和你的心理距離，例如，提及共同利益或夸贊對方。當然，這種做法稍不留神就會走偏：你不想去誤導、欺騙或操縱讀者；只是想勸導、說服、促使他們作出決定。

????If you really want to get your message across, make sure you understand the mindset of the person you’re emailing.

????Amazon AMZN 1.60% lists close to 6,000 book titles on “business writing.” You might wonder why you need to read anything else on the subject. Well, once you start practicing what you’ve learnt from many of these books, you might find that an email of yours still fails to achieve its ultimate purpose: to evoke the response you want. A good email persuades its reader to take a specific action, such as: approve an investment proposal, provide information, agree to provide a testimonial, or accept an invitation. So, if your text doesn’t get your reader to act as you intended, you have wasted both your and her time.

????Below you’ll find seven tips to help you be a better email writer, which I have drawn from my 25 years’ experience as a strategy consultant. What these seven tips have in common is that they focus on the psychology of the reader. Why is that important? As soon as a reader receives a text, he mentally pigeonholes it into one of several, possibly damning categories: “ignore and ditch,” “read later,” “read now, but no action.” Obviously you want your reader to pigeonhole your text in the “read and act now” slot.

????To get your reader to respond positively, it helps to understand a little about social psychology and behavioral economics. Specifically, two great books serve as a good intellectual foundation to these fields. The first is Robert Cialdini’sInfluence: The Psychology of Persuasion, which addresses the psychology of compliance, i.e. the factors that cause one person to say yes to another person. The second is Richard Thaler’s and Cass Sunstein’sNudge, which examines systems that help people improve their ability to select options that will make them better off. While these books don’t deal with business writing per se, they contain relevant and applicable insights. They lead to tips that you will find complementary to the often technical tips about business writing that you find elsewhere, such as “avoid the passive voice,” “avoid jargon and acronyms,” and “vary the length and structure of your sentences.”

????Let’s move on to the tips.

????Tip 1. Take into account where and when your boss reads your text.In today’s fast-paced world of instant, omnipresent and byte-size hypercommunication, it is easy and tempting to fire off a text to your targeted reader as soon as you have finished writing it. But think about when and where he will receive your text. For example, it may not be a great idea to mail a request for a two-months leave of absence to your boss on a Friday evening when he is waiting at an overcrowded airport for a delayed return flight home after three days of intense and unsuccessful negotiations with union delegates. Your request may be perfectly reasonable and eloquently worked out, but you’d better wait for a more auspicious time and place for it to land in your boss’s inbox.

????Tip 2. Stand out in a crowded inbox by using clues.Busy as businesspeople are, they cannot afford to think too long about every decision they have to make. They often make fairly automatic decisions based on past experience or just one written clue that is presented to them. It starts with simple things like the subject header of your mail: it should convey opportunity and benefit to the reader rather than effort and goodwill from him. For example, when you write an email to solicit participation in a benchmarking exercise, the heading “Study” may evoke more dreadful associations than “How to improve performance.” More profoundly, make yourself likeable to your reader, for example, by referring to shared interests or flattering him. Of course you’re walking a fine line: you don’t want to mislead, deceive or manipulate your readers; you simply want to convince, persuade and facilitate.