Email Introduction Etiquette

If you&#x27;re like me, and sometimes jump to the discussion before reading the article, please go ahead and read the article. It&#x27;s one of those rare ones that is truly a summary of itself: super short, information dense, with every part having meaning and nothing else.<p>This protocol is super simple, and allows for very efficient transfer of information without putting people in uncomfortable situations.

&gt; makes a specific ask<p>You mean ask a specific question? Or is this silicon valley jargon?<p>edit:<p>Through the power of The Googles I now realize he could have been using the stock market form of &#x27;ask&#x27;. It makes some sense since you&#x27;re asking for an investment. Not that I like it any better...<p><pre><code> The price a seller is willing to accept for a security, also known as the offer price. Along with the price, the ask quote will generally also stipulate the amount of the security willing to be sold at that price.</code></pre> <a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/ask.asp" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.investopedia.com&#x2F;terms&#x2F;a&#x2F;ask.asp</a>

Can anyone clarify—why BCC?<p>More precisely, what purpose does moving Mark to BCC, and then acknowledging that and addressing him in the letter, serve? Why not just exclude him from the conversation completely, or leave in CC if you&#x27;re still addressing him?

This is spot on, but this is still a PITA for everyone involved. There should still be a better way.

As someone who does a lot of introducing, if someone already owes me a favor, sometimes I try to cut the middle step of, &quot;Would you talk to X?&quot; and just cc: them both, but I realize it&#x27;s a bit presumptuous.<p>As the OP rightfully suggests, it&#x27;s the little things in etiquette that are important.

I find the social dynamics of To&#x2F;CC&#x2F;BCC really interesting. You only see it in Emails and it doesn&#x27;t exist in any other communication medium. Most social communication platforms I can think of the top of my head only really support the &quot;To&quot; part of email.

I&#x27;ve often been tripped up by the semantics of the word &quot;meet&quot; in email introductions, as in &quot;Nice to meet you&quot;. Everyone seems to want to reserve the word &quot;meet&quot; for actual in-person meeting, and I&#x27;ve seen such constructs as: &quot;Pleased to &#x27;meet&#x27; you&quot; &quot;Pleased to e-meet you&quot; &quot;Pleased to virtually meet you&quot;, etc<p>I&#x27;d love to hear how the language-sensitive hacker news crowd deals with this issue, and also what tortured constructions you&#x27;ve seen recently. Currently I&#x27;m using &quot;pleased to make your acquaintance&quot; or &quot;thanks Jim for the intro&quot;, but neither of those is completely satisfactory.

It&#x27;s nice to have a reference like this, but as the comments on this thread display, everyone has their own preferred variant(s).<p>It&#x27;s silly to think that there is a &quot;one size fits all&quot; email intro framework. Different contexts require different amounts of background information and introducer participation.<p>Really, the greater theme at play is the need for people to think more about how their actions (here, nearly effortless electronic ones) effect others. Sending email intros without understanding the benefits and detriments to both sides is impolite at best and downright rude at worst.<p>The Golden Rule applies, even to email.

Great, actionable advice! I&#x27;ve been using Gagan Biyani&#x27;s &quot;forwardable email&quot; as a guideline, which is very similar. <a href="https://www.udemy.com/raising-capital-for-startups/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.udemy.com&#x2F;raising-capital-for-startups&#x2F;</a><p>It seems that the likelihood of the email being read increases the shorter email is. At the same time, I have found the shorter the email, the harder it is to write.

Related: One of my favorite articles on how to send an email introduction: <a href="http://jfleeg.tumblr.com/post/21231029406/the-art-of-making-an-email-intro-photo-above" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jfleeg.tumblr.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;21231029406&#x2F;the-art-of-making-...</a>

This is generally the protocol I use. I like to use BCC during the handoff if the referral is coming to me. I&#x27;m surprised at how often I get pulled into conversations that I don&#x27;t need to be a part of, because someone doesn&#x27;t BCC me in return.

Anytime I have worked for a larger organization, I wished they would have a quick session on best practices &#x2F; etiquette with communication.

The &quot;fresh email&quot; from Mark fails to satisfy the author&#x27;s own prescription: it does not &quot;make a specific ask&quot;.

This proposed workflow reads like a product spec for a great web app... hopefully someone builds a website which does this exactly!

Wow, this is anal.<p>You can learn a lot about people by observing their etiquette.<p>(I am pretty sure what the first comment to this comment will be)

Nice. Also learned how and when to really use BCC.

Thanks, the BCC bit was interesting.

A fine article, but - maybe this makes me a jerk - a bit obvious.

This is why it&#x27;s unreasonable to have any faith in the contemporary Silicon Valley. Cold-calling used to work out there, because it was full of people who just wanted to do a good job and help each other succeed. Now, you need an introduction because it&#x27;s full of emasculated social climbers who need some way of determining whether a person is of sufficient social status to merit 30 seconds of consideration. Because of that, the positive-feedback loops that occur when hard-working people want each other to succeed have completely stopped in the Valley.