How to end an email?

如何給你的郵件寫個結尾？

When you’re drafting an email, ending it is the easiest part. Whether you sign-off with “Warmest Regards,” “Thanks,” or “Keep On Keepin’ On,” it only takes a second, and you probably don’t give it a second thought. Do email closings even matter? And if so, is “best” really best? We looked at closings in over 350,000 email threads, and found that certain email closings deliver higher response rates.

當你寫一封電子郵件時，結束它是最簡單的部分。不管你是以“最熱烈的問候”、“謝謝”還是“保持聯(lián)系”來結束，只需要一秒鐘，你可能不會再想一想。電子郵件的關閉有什么重要的嗎？如果是的話，“最好”真的是最好的嗎？我們研究了超過350000個電子郵件結束的線索，發(fā)現(xiàn)某些電子郵件的結束語可以提供更高的響應率。

For our study, we used messages from mailing list archives of over twenty different online communities. These emails proved to be a great sample for looking at variations in response rate, as many entailed people asking for help or advice, hoping for a reply.

在我們的研究中，我們使用了來自20多個網上社區(qū)的郵件列表存檔的郵件。這些郵件被證明是一個很好的樣本，可以用來觀察回復率的變化，因為許多人需要尋求幫助或建議，希望得到回復。

Email closings are largely determined by the setting of an email. You might sign a message to your mom with “Love,” but would (hopefully) choose a more formal closing when writing to your HR person. So first, we wanted to get an idea of which closings were used in these online communities Most popular email closings.

電子郵件的結束語在很大程度上取決于電子郵件的設置。你可以用“愛你”用于給你媽媽的郵件，但在給人力資源部的人寫信時，最好選擇一個更正式的結尾。因此，首先我們想知道這些網上社區(qū)的郵件使用了哪些最流行的結束語。

Eight email sign-offs (pictured, in order of popularity) appeared over a thousand times each.

以下8種結束語（按流行度排列）每種都出現(xiàn)了上千次。

Not much of a surprise here: these eight closings are all common email sign-offs in general. As none of these endings seem specific to online communities, any trends we find should be relevant for anyone who emails. So now for the moment of truth: how did these closings correlate with response rate?

這并不奇怪：這八種結束語都是常見的電子郵件的結尾。由于這些結尾似乎都不是哪個網上社區(qū)特有的，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)的任何趨勢都應該與發(fā)電子郵件的人有關。所以說實話：這些關閉與響應率能有什么關系？

Emails that closed with a variation of thank you got significantly more responses than emails ending with other popular closings.

以“謝謝”結尾的電子郵件比以其他流行方式結尾的電子郵件收到的回復要多得多。

The difference a simple “thanks” makes in getting a reply was even clearer when we compared emails with “thankful closings” to all others. Emails where we detected a thankful closing saw a response rate of 62%.  This compared to a response rate of 46% for emails without a thankful closing. Closing with an expression of gratitude thus correlated with a whopping 16% relative increase in average response rate compared to signing off another way.

當我們將有“感謝的結尾”的電子郵件與所有其他郵件進行比較時，簡單的“謝謝”在獲得回復方面所起的作用更加明顯。我們發(fā)現(xiàn)以“感謝”結尾的電子郵件的回復率為62%。相比之下，沒有感謝結尾的郵件回復率為46%。與以另一種方式結尾相比，以表示感謝的方式結束一封郵件的平均回復率要高出16%。

After doing some sleuthing, we realized our findings actually reaffirm a 2010 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology titled “A Little Thanks Goes a Long Way.” In this Grant & Gino study, 69 college student participants got one of two emails asking for help with a cover letter. Half received an email that with a line that included “Thank you so much!” The other half got a similar email, sans an expression of gratitude. The study found that recipients were more than twice as likely to offer assistance when they received the email that included “thank you.”

在做了一些調查之后，我們意識到我們的研究結果實際上重申了2010年發(fā)表在《個性與社會心理學雜志》上的一項研究結果，它的標題為“小小的感謝能起到很大的作用”。在格蘭特與基諾的這項研究中，69名大學生參與者收到了兩封要求幫助寫求職信的電子郵件中的一封。一半的人收到的郵件，上面寫著“非常感謝！另一半收到了一封類似的郵件，但沒有表達感激之情。研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，當收件人收到包含“謝謝”的電子郵件時，他們提供幫助的可能性是另一組人的兩倍多。

Also noteworthy was that generic email sign-offs like “regards” had lower response rates. And it turned out that “best” was in fact worst among popular email closings. Ending an email with “best” had the lowest average response rate when compared to other email sign-offs that appeared 1,000+ times.

同樣值得注意的是，像“問候”這樣的普通電子郵件結束語的回復率較低。事實證明，在受歡迎的電子郵件結束語中，“best”實際上是最差的。與出現(xiàn)1000多次的其他電子郵件結束語相比，以“best”結尾的電子郵件的平均回復率最低。

Among closings seen at least 1,000 times in our study, “thanks in advance” ended up correlating with the highest response rate, which makes sense, as the email’s recipient is being thanked specifically for a response which has yet to be written. There’s a bit of posturing involved with this closing, but it turns out it works pretty well. But no matter how you express your thanks, doing so certainly appears to be your best bet in closing an email if you want a response. Interestingly, all of the email sign-offs that appeared 1,000+ times saw higher email response rates than the overall average response rate across all emails in our sample (which was 47.5%).

在我們的研究中，在至少出現(xiàn)1000次的結束語中，結果是“提前感謝”獲得最高的回復率，這是有道理的，因為電子郵件的接收者正被特別感謝一個尚未進行的回復。這個結尾有點裝腔作勢，但事實證明效果很好。但不管你如何表達感謝，如果你想得到回復，那么這樣做無疑是你結束電子郵件的最佳選擇。有趣的是，在我們的樣本郵件種，所有使用了出現(xiàn)1000次以上的結束語的電子郵件，回復率都高于總體平均回復率（47.5%）。

correlate 相關聯(lián)

whopping 驚人的，巨大的

sleuthing 偵查，調查