Writing an Effective Network Outreach Email

Hi there, happy Thursday!

Welcome to issue #32 of the Network Wrangler! It’s only taken me 32 issues to finally deliver one on 8/8 at 08:08am!

Today, we’re demystifying the components of the best email for network outreach and talking through the network benefits of collaboration.

Writing an Effective Network Outreach Email

More than 200 million people in the United States attend conferences and large meetings each year, spending over $280 billion to do so. They do this to meet new people in the belief that knowing more people will somehow magically translate into value.

Decades of research have shown, however, that focusing on network size alone is misguided. The quality of your social connections predicts your cognitive functioning, work resilience, and work engagement. The structure of these contacts (as an expansionist, a broker, or a convener) helps reveal everything from your pay to the quality of your ideas.

Even beyond the workplace, your social connections have an outsized impact on your health and happiness. The compiled findings from over seventy studies show that loneliness increases the chance of premature death by 26 percent. This is the adverse health equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

We can insulate ourselves from this epidemic of loneliness by building our networks strategically: by paying attention to the people we connect with and how we do so.

I’ve written previously about the uplifting power of sending a simple “thinking of you” message to someone you haven’t contacted in a long time. This is a way to reactivate parts of your network you’ve already established and breathe new life into those connections.

Today, I want to focus on building out your network by strategically contacting strangers. These are the people you haven’t yet met but are aware of and want to get to know better.

• They could be someone who works for a competitor, and you want to befriend them to share insights on the marketplace.

• They could be someone who has a job title you aspire to have one day, and you want to find out what it’s like to be in that role.

• They could be someone who has a kid a few years older than yours, and you want to know how they decided to pick one sport over another when the choice had to be made.

Regardless of your motivation for contacting them, an effective network outreach email should include three critical components: make them familiar with who you are, time box, and provide a frame of reference for what you want to talk about. In more detail:

1. who are you, and how do you relate to the recipient. Besides sharing your name (and, if applicable, your title), you want to identify the commonality you share with them. Basically, you’re letting them know this is not some message you’re spamming to a huge list. 
   
   Use this first sentence to say how you found them and why you picked them in particular.
   

2. your request for a finite amount of time on their calendar (e.g., a 15- or 30-minute call). Keep the time requested as short as you can to demonstrate respect for their time.
   
   You want to have a finite window for the request — within the next two weeks — to timebox your request and invite a response.
   

3. provide the three questions you would like to ask them during the time you’re requesting. By sharing what you want to ask them ahead of time, you accomplish (at least) two things: 1) you’re giving them time to think about their answers and avoid any off-the-cuff responses, and 2) you’re demonstrating you’ve done your homework and give credibility to your request of their time and experience.
   
   Your questions should be specific to the experience you want to learn from. Don’t ask generic questions!
   
   Some of my favorite questions include: “Knowing what you do now, what advice would you give yourself back when you made that decision?” or “What did you think was important to know when you started but now know wasn’t so important?”

Remember, people LOVE talking about themselves. You’re reaching out to give them the opportunity to do so.

This is not the time to promote yourself. It’s about them, not you. Your best promotion of yourself (and why you’d be a good connection in their network) is to ask good questions.

They’ll love telling you about themselves, and they’ll remember you fondly because you gave them this opportunity.

One bonus to sending the questions you want to ask them ahead of time? At the very least, if they can’t find the time in your schedule, they can answer your questions by email instead.

Oh, and a reminder of the bonus question that all networking emails should end with: who else do you think I should talk to?

I’ve received a handful of outreach emails in this format, and each time I was both flattered (they really wanted to get to know my thinking) and compelled to find time to talk.

Have you ever been on the receiving end of one of these thoughtful requests? How did you handle it? How would you have made it better?

Given a Choice, Choose to Collaborate

I was talking with a couple of recent college graduates last month, and they asked my advice on how to network to find a better job than their current entry-level positions.

Instead of talking about network topographies and strategic communications, I told them the best thing they could do was find opportunities to collaborate with others at work.

That’s right, you should take the opportunity to collaborate.

If you’re given a choice between an assignment that will allow you to work on building your skills (programming, finance, writing, etc), you should instead look for opportunities to collaborate with others and fill your schedule with those collaborations before blocking time for independent skills building.

Why over-index on collaboration?

When you collaborate, you’re in the middle of all that messiness that comes from working with other human beings:

• improving communications

• streamlining scheduling

• setting priorities as a group

• leading project management

• fine-tuning relationship management

When you collaborate, you naturally build your network as part of the work's in-stream effort. You only get the work done by networking with others. Network building doesn’t happen on the side or as an extra activity when you’re knee-deep in a collaboration.

Here are just some of the many benefits that can come from a successful collaboration:

• What happens when you enjoy working with someone? You talk with others about your experience with them. The network signal is “this is a valuable node in the network.”

• What happens when you discover you need someone else to help in the collaboration? You find someone else who can contribute or can delegate. The network grows with a new node.

• What happens when you finish the project? You have an accomplishment that you can share, and it demonstrates that you’re a team player and can get stuff done. The network signal is “I am a valuable node.”

• What happens when life gets in the way, and you can’t fully participate, but the project gets done anyway? You benefit from the group effort of picking up the slack. While this puts you into a reciprocity deficit, you can repay by doing valuable things for others. The network benefits by strengthening the ties to the team.

So, while it might be tempting to spend your time skills-building at your own pace, you’re better off finding ways to collaborate and strengthen your networking muscles. The long-term network effects will far outpace any gains from sharpening your skills alone.

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