How to Write Emails People Actually Respond To: Introducing the GAIN Framework

Sarah Doody [00:00:00]: Hey there. I’m Sarah Doody, host of the Career Strategy Podcast. Many professionals are seeking more impact, flexibility, growth, and let’s face it, getting paid what they’re worth. But how do you unlock this in your career? It starts with strategy. I’m taking you behind the scenes of what’s working for my career coaching clients. You’ll hear strategies and actionable, yet sometimes against the grain, advice for how you can be the CEO of your career and stop dreading Mondays. Ready to level up your career? Let’s get after it. Welcome back to another episode of the Career Strategy Podcast.

Sarah Doody [00:00:43]: Today, I wanna help you with a problem that I’m guessing you’ve encountered at some point, maybe even today, and that is you send a cold message, an email, a DM to someone and they don’t reply. How do we prevent this from happening? It’s very simple. I’m gonna give you a 4 step framework that you can follow to write any message, whether it’s to a recruiter, a hiring manager, your boss, a potential client. Who knows? This is going to be a very timeless framework you can use to increase the chances that people actually reply to you. And as someone who receives a lot of emails, a lot of cold emails, and messages, and DMs on all of the platforms, I’m gonna give you 2 mistakes that I see people make. Number 1, the message is too long. I don’t need you to send me a 2,000 word question, which someone actually did once. Instead, I need you to get to the point and be clear on what you’re asking me because we are all busy.

Sarah Doody [00:01:48]: And if I see a message that is 2,000 words long, I’m sorry but I’m not reading that. Number 2 is you need to be very clear on why you are messaging this person in the first place. And if you have that clarity, then it’s going to help you write a better message to them. The problem I see is, like, a lot of people in their emails and DMs, it’s almost as though they don’t really have a question and they’re just typing out and processing mentally as they’re they go their situation and hoping that I will be able to read between the lines and offer some advice. So instead, take time before you write that message to do that mental processing, so that then you can be clear on the situation and what specific questions or advice you are after. The more specific you are with your message and your request, the more likely someone is going to answer. Alright, so what is the 4 part framework that is going to help you write messages that people hopefully reply to? It’s 4 letters, spells the word gain, g a I n. Let’s go through what each of those letters mean.

Sarah Doody [00:03:11]: G, g is for greeting. This might seem obvious, but you want to start your message, especially if it’s an email, with some type of greeting. And I include this because, and my reason will make you laugh, if you mess up the greeting, it’s not setting a very good first impression. And what I mean is if people spell my name wrong, like, they don’t put an h at the end of Sarah or they spell my last name wrong, that’s not a good first impression. Right? Like, especially if you’re messaging me from somewhere like LinkedIn where my name is right there. So be mindful of your greeting. Spell the name right, but also be mindful of how formal of a greeting is necessary for who you are messaging. You know, I sometimes feel like people are overly formal, and it kinda comes across as trying too hard.

Sarah Doody [00:04:13]: This, of course, could just be my personal opinion. But starting out with a greeting like, dear sir or madam or dear madam or things like that, to me, it’s just a little formal. Now maybe if you’re, like, emailing the president of a company, that might be appropriate. But be mindful of kind of the the tone and formality you’re using for that specific person, and of course spell their name right. But I say this because I’ve seen people make these mistakes, right? It’s kinda like for every rule there is, it exists because someone messed up and so someone needed to make a rule. Alright. So that’s g. A.

Sarah Doody [00:04:57]: A stands for anchor. Anchor is some context to explain or remind the person how you know each other or how you are connected. And this is really applicable if you are emailing someone that you know through a friend or a colleague. It can also apply though if you are cold messaging people. So let’s say you are cold messaging a hiring manager, and you saw that they posted on LinkedIn that their team is hiring. So you don’t know them. It’s still a cold message. However, that anchor could be something like, hey.

Sarah Doody [00:05:45]: I saw your post from last Thursday where you said your team is hiring a, you know, insert job description. That would be an anchor. That is connecting you to that person, giving a bit of context about how you heard about them or how you are connected or how they came into your orbit, it’s also valuable if you’re reaching out to someone that maybe you feel like you’ve lost touch with, maybe you met someone at a conference last year or longer, and you haven’t stayed in touch with them that well, the anchor could be, hey. It’s been a while since we were at that conference in France or whatever, blah blah blah. Great. Now you’re really jogging their memory with that anchor. So we need to have a strong anchor and the anchor is going to also help catch their attention and it kind of is better than just starting with, you know, your ask, in my opinion. Alright.

Sarah Doody [00:06:45]: So we have our greeting, our anchor, I stands for intent. We wanna get to the point with a specific reason why we are sending this message. We wanna get to the point in as few words as possible while providing enough detail that you’re not gonna need to go back and forth with this person for 10 emails to have enough information for them to answer your question. So this could be let’s go with our example of you seeing the job that someone posted last Thursday. Great. Maybe the intent of this message is to clarify whether this job is remote or not because you read the job description and it’s not a 100% clear. So the intent of this message is to say, hey. I saw this job you posted last Thursday.

Sarah Doody [00:07:39]: Great. I’ve read the job description. One thing is unclear. It Sarah, this is a remote job, yet it also says with occasional in office responsibilities and you wanna clarify what that means. Maybe, like, is it once a month in office, once a week, who knows? So that’s the idea. You wanna be very clear on the intent of the message and get to the point as quickly as possible. N stands for non cliche closing. Alright.

Sarah Doody [00:08:15]: I include this similar to the greeting because sometimes people end their messages with things that just feel a little off to me. And, again, sometimes sound like it’s trying too hard or, honestly, sometimes it feels a little So things like, thank you so much for your time and consideration. I really hope you’re going to reply to my message or something. Of course, I’m exaggerating, but you get the point. Right? Being overly complimentary can sometimes feel like you’re sucking up, and that just feels weird to the recipient. So just keep it casual and hope to hear from you, or thanks for your time, or have a great day, or something like that. Another thing to keep in mind with that closing is a lot of people like to default to asking people to have a phone call, and that can often be very heavy lift for people. One tip I have for you in that closing is to give people the opportunity to respond on their terms.

Sarah Doody [00:09:18]: And what I mean is, you could say something like, look forward to your reply or if you prefer, I’m happy to have a phone call, and give them that option of getting on the phone with you or just sending you back an email. But I will say, as someone who is asked quite often to have, you know, virtual coffee dates and coffee chats and all these things, that takes up a lot of time for me. Right? I have to find when we have common time, schedule the meeting, etcetera. Whereas, if you just ask your question over email, I can probably respond to it faster than it would be for us to get a meeting on a calendar and then have the meeting, etcetera. So g a I n, casual yet appropriate greeting and anchor to set the tone, remind them of who you are, how you met, where you heard about this person, intent, what is your question? Let’s get to the point. And then a closing that is not cliche and gives the person the opportunity to reply in a manner that fits their schedule and their available time also. Alright. So this framework can be used for anything.

Sarah Doody [00:10:32]: Right? Hiring managers, asking your boss a question, a potential freelance client, a colleague, some person in your industry that you want to, you know, ask a question of because you read an article they wrote and it sparked some ideas and you wanna follow-up. Who knows? But g a I n, you can use this for so many scenarios, and I promise if you use this, it’s gonna help your messages be clearer. They’re gonna connect with the recipient and hopefully increase the chances that they reply. Alright. I hope this helps you. Feel free to send me a message and let me know if this works. If you start doing it and you’re like, oh my gosh, people are actually replying because I did the GAIN framework, I would love to hear about it. So that’s all for today.

Sarah Doody [00:11:21]: Hope you learned something new. And can you do me a favor? If you found this episode helpful, hit pause right now and give this podcast a rating. All you need to do is give it a star rating. And if you have a little extra time, feel free to write a little review. But those star ratings really help signal to Spotify, Apple, etcetera that people find this podcast helpful. And then it suggests it to other people so we can help more people with their careers. Alright. That is all I have for you today.

Sarah Doody [00:11:57]: Hope you have a great rest of your day and I’ll see you in another episode. Thanks for listening to the Career Strategy Podcast. Make sure to follow me, Sarah Doody, on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. If anything in today’s episode resonated with you, I’d love to hear about it. Tag me on social media or send me a DM. And lastly, if you found this episode helpful, I’d really appreciate it if you could share it with a friend or give us a quick rating on Spotify or review on Apple Podcasts. Catch you later.