We all send and receive a deluge of emails every day and no one wants their messages to be ignored, but what’s the best way to end a message so that you actually get a reply? “Thanks,” “best wishes,” or something else?




Boomerang, the company behind popular email productivity apps, recently conducted a study that looked at different email sign-offs and the response rates that each phrase received. The three most common closing messages were no surprise—”thanks,” “regards,” and “cheers”—but the sign-off that received the most responses was “thanks in advance.” That phrase received a response rate of 65.7%. Comparatively, messages ending with “best” only received a 51.2% response rate. And generally, ending a message with gratitude always helps:

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.


Of course the context and setting of the message also affects how you’d end it (I wouldn’t write “XOXO” to my boss, nor would I write “kind regards” to my mom). More over, “thanks in advance” is likely to be associated with a specific request which means those messages would have more responses anyway. But it’s something to consider next time you write an email that you actually need a response to.

Forget “Best” or “Sincerely,” This Email Closing Gets the Most Replies | Boomerang