Thanks in advance

My most important email (8 years ago). Plus how to close. And, 7 other things worth your time.

The most important and fortuitous email I ever sent in my life ended with these words:

“If you're up for it, great; if not, no hard feelings.”

This was how I closed the out-of-the-blue message I sent in 2012 to my now-wife, Karen. We’d dated in college, but we hadn’t talked for years. Here I was, basically cold-emailing her to ask her out.

Fast-forward eight years, and she and our daughter and I would tell you it was a pretty good last line for an email, given the net result.

That said, it’s probably not the best way to end all emails.

In fact, a while back I came across a study that examined 300,000 emails (most of them found on threads on various online forums over the years), and advised best practices.

Among them: How should you end an email if you want people to reply? Specifically, what words should you use?

The most-commonly replied-to phrases, along with their reply yield rates, were as follows:

• "Thanks in advance," with a 65.7 percent reply rate

• "Thanks," at 63.0 percent

• "Thank you…