--- title: How Should You End an Email? description: Find out the best way to end an email to increase the likelihood that you get a response. canonical: https://time.com/4685731/best-email-signature/ author: Real Simple article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-02-28T17:15:02.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T09:04:59.115Z og:title: You've Probably Been Signing Your Emails the Wrong Way og:description: Change it up to get a quicker response og:url: https://time.com/4685731/best-email-signature/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt26bda56561824fac/6988bc5f86f68e4f7d6e3ad0/woman-emails-signature.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: woman-emails-signature.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: You've Probably Been Signing Your Emails the Wrong Way twitter:description: Change it up to get a quicker response twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt26bda56561824fac/6988bc5f86f68e4f7d6e3ad0/woman-emails-signature.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # You've Probably Been Signing Your Emails the Wrong Way by [Nora Horvath / Real Simple](https://time.com/author/real-simple/) ## Nora Horvath / Real Simple Feb 28, 2017 5:15 PM UTC  Cropped shot of a group of businesspeople working in the office Cropped shot of a group of businesspeople working in the officePeopleImages—Getty Images by [Nora Horvath / Real Simple](https://time.com/author/real-simple/) ## Nora Horvath / Real Simple Feb 28, 2017 5:15 PM UTC If you waste time agonizing over what catchy phrase to use as an [email subject](http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/technology/communication-etiquette/how-write-email) or what version of “hello” sounds most appropriate, but don’t think twice over signing off your note with “best,” you might want to re-think [your email strategy](http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/technology/communication-etiquette/email-etiquette-rules). [A new study](http://blog.boomerangapp.com/2017/01/how-to-end-an-email-email-sign-offs/), which analyzed over 350,000 emails and their closings, found that emails that expressions of thanks as a close—“thanks in advance” or “thank you”—had an average response rate of 62 percent. Emails without a thankful closing—“regards” or “sincerely”—had a much lower response rate of 46 percent. Of the most popular (appearing in the sample more than 1,000 times) email closings, people who signed off with “best” garnered the worst response rates. **_Read More:_** [**_5 Genius Email Hacks That Will Boost Your Productivity_**](http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/time-management/email-hacks-boost-productivity?xid=rs) “Among closings seen at least 1,000 times in our study, “thanks in advance” ended up correlating with the highest response rate, which makes sense, as the email’s recipient is being thanked specifically for a response which has yet to be written,” data scientist Brendan Greenly said in a[statement](http://blog.boomerangapp.com/2017/01/how-to-end-an-email-email-sign-offs/). “There’s a bit of posturing involved with this closing, but it turns out it works pretty well.” **_Read More:_** [**_7 Out of Office Messages We Wish We Could Use_**](http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/job-career/out-of-office-messages?xid=motto) The study was conducted by the company behind [Boomerang](http://boomerangapp.com/), an email plugin compatible with Gmail, Outlook, and Android, that schedules emails, snoozes messages, and creates read receipts, among other features. (Not to be confused with the Instagram feature of the same name.) The company uses data like this to inform their feature “Respondable,” which analyzes email in real-time and alerts you to changes that might help you get a quicker reply. **_Read More:_** [**_How Men and Women Email Differently_** ](http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/technology/men-women-email?xid=rs) Boomerang’s findings piggyback off of a 2010 study where a sample of college students received two emails asking for advice, one with an expression of gratitude and one without. The results, published in the _Journal of Personality and Social Psychology_, found that the students were more than [twice as likely](http://www.umkc.edu/facultyombuds/documents/grant%5Fgino%5Fjpsp%5F2010.pdf) to respond to the email that included a thank you. No matter what you’re emailing about, a little gratefulness seems to go a long way. (That sounds like something we’ve heard before!) _This_ [_article_](http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/technology/best-email-reply) _originally appeared on_ [_RealSimple.com_](http://RealSimple.com) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4685731/best-email-signature/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4685731/best-email-signature/"},"headline":"You've Probably Been Signing Your Emails the Wrong Way","datePublished":"2017-02-28T17:15:02.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T09:04:59.115Z","description":"Change it up to get a quicker response","url":"https://time.com/4685731/best-email-signature/","keywords":["motto"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt26bda56561824fac/6988bc5f86f68e4f7d6e3ad0/woman-emails-signature.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nora Horvath / Real Simple"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt26bda56561824fac/6988bc5f86f68e4f7d6e3ad0/woman-emails-signature.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"woman-emails-signature.jpg","caption":"Cropped shot of a group of businesspeople working in the office","creditText":"PeopleImages—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/motto/","name":"motto"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4685731/best-email-signature/","name":"You've Probably Been Signing Your Emails the Wrong Way"}}]}] ```