Since I’ve been somewhat opinionated in the past regarding email etiquette, a recent post by Anand Sanwal at Quartz got me nodding my head.

You’re probably doing email introductions wrong

Anand describes the situation where one person is introducing two others by way of email – and the right and wrong way to do it.

Here’s the wrong way:

Hey Mary,
Wanted to introduce you to Jack (cc’d) who runs Gruber.com an “Uber for granite countertops”. They’re killing it and are really disrupting the granite space. They’re also making the world a better place.
Think you guys are doing similar things, tackling similar problems, etc. so you should chat.
I’ll leave it to you to connect.
Hope all is well.
Best,
Joe

And the ‘double opt-in’ right way:

Mary,
My friend Jack runs Gruber.com, an Uber for granite countertops. They are doing things with data visualizations in d3.js which are pretty amazing.
Given all that your company is doing with d3.js, I thought connecting you might be useful so you can talk shop. In addition, Jack has found a really good way to source talented d3.js developers and I know this was a pain point for you.
He’d love to chat with you about your content marketing success and how he might apply it to the granite countertop industry.
Let me know if an introduction via email would be useful, and I’ll make that happen. If not or just too busy, no worries.
We should catch up soon.
Best,
Joe

The solution boils down to this: Don’t be lazy; Respect the time of your friends and colleagues; Take the time to do a bit of the legwork.

I love these kinds of tips. They’re not always immediately obvious, but make total sense when you think about it.

Read the original article here: You’re probably doing email introductions wrong