--- title: This Is the ONLY Way You Should Sign Your Emails description: What's the best way to sign an email? Research says certain ways will provide more returns. authors: - name: Kristen Bahler role: Managing Editor url: https://money.com/author/kristen-bahler/ bio: Kristen Bahler has spent more than a decade turning culture, work and consumer spending trends into conversation-driving stories. Today, she leads Money's sponsored content channel and reader-favorite franchises like Best Places to Live and Best Places to Travel. education: Northeastern University, MA Journalism at_money_since: 2016 articles: 52 covers: - Career Advice - Banking - Business - Credit - Credit Cards - Economy and Politics - Education - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Pets - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes - Technology social: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-bahler/ published: '2017-08-01T10:00:47.000Z' modified: '2024-05-16T12:37:08.000Z' section: Career Advice tags: - Email - work word_count: 515 canonical: https://money.com/this-is-the-only-way-you-should-sign-your-emails-2/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![email-signature-money-facebook-02](https://img.money.com/2017/07/email-signature-money-facebook-02.jpg) Chances are, the amount of thought you put into firing off an email is minimal at best. And for good reason: You’re a valuable employee in a competitive market, baby. You’ve got bigger fish to fry. But every so often, something throws you off your game. There’s a lunch invitation that needs a tactful workaround, or a high-stakes strategy that needs some rejiggering. Maybe you want to ask your boss for a day off, or a coworker to rethink their happy hour invite list. Next thing you know, you've devoted a chunk of your workday to crafting the perfect email, and agonizing over every word. By the time you get to the signature, separating your "bests" from your "kind regards" is usually an afterthought. But is there a right way to end an email? Turns out, there totally is. And it's how you should sign every email, experts say. Just write “thanks.” The logic is simple. “Thanks” doesn’t come across as stiff, or cloying. It's appropriate for practically every type of exchange — you can use it to end a note to any level, department, or role at your company. And, importantly, it's more likely to get a response than any other kind of signature. Earlier this year, email scheduling app [Boomerang analyzed](http://blog.boomerangapp.com/2017/01/how-to-end-an-email-email-sign-offs/) more 350,000 email threads to see which “closings” got the best response rates. Sign offs that included some variation of “thanks” got a response 62% of the time, compared to a 46% for emails that lacked “thankful” closings. “Closing an email with gratitude is a good bet, especially when you are requesting information or hoping to get someone to respond to your email,” says Brendan Greenley, a data scientist at Boomerang. “These ‘thankful’ email sign-offs even outperformed tried and true closings like ‘best’ and ‘regards’.” Of all the closings in Boomerang’s survey, “thanks in advance” got the best response rate (65.7%) followed by “thanks,” (63%), and “thank you,” (57.9%). “Best" — a controversial email closing for years now — had the lowest average response rate (51.2%) of all the closings Boomerang studied. But it’s hard to tell exactly why. Greenley cites previous [research](http://www.umkc.edu/facultyombuds/documents/grant_gino_jpsp_2010.pdf) that found expressing gratitude increases the likelihood of receiving a positive response as one theory to why other closings fared better. Yet, experts agree it’s in bad form. “Striking the right tone in your email sign off is important because it's the last thing a person reads, and it seals the tone of whatever you've sent,” says Brie Reynolds, a career specialist at [FlexJobs](https://www.flexjobs.com/). “I'd recommend staying away from ‘best.” I've heard a number of people comment that it sounds a bit cold or rushed.” Down the line, as companies increase their reliance on instant messaging services like Slack to kill internal email, this will become less of a debate. For now, though, email etiquette is still relevant. And "thanks" is the clear winner. "It works for most situations,” says career consultant [Denise Dudley](http://denisemdudley.com/about/). "Even if you’re unhappy with the person you’re writing to, you’re still thankful that they’re willing to listen—or at least that’s what the ‘thanks’ implies." ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/this-is-the-only-way-you-should-sign-your-emails-2/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Career Advice", "item": "https://money.com/career-advice/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Professional Development", "item": "https://money.com/professional-development/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "This Is the ONLY Way You Should Sign Your Emails" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/this-is-the-only-way-you-should-sign-your-emails-2/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/this-is-the-only-way-you-should-sign-your-emails-2/", "name": "This Is the ONLY Way You Should Sign Your Emails", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2017-08-01T10:00:47.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/this-is-the-only-way-you-should-sign-your-emails-2/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/this-is-the-only-way-you-should-sign-your-emails-2/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-05-16T12:37:08.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "This Is the ONLY Way You Should Sign Your Emails", "articleSection": "Career Advice", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2017/07/email-signature-money-facebook-02.jpg", "width": 11667, "height": 8750, "caption": "email-signature-money-facebook-02" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Kristen Bahler", "url": "https://money.com/author/kristen-bahler/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/kristen-bahler/#author", "description": "Kristen Bahler has spent more than a decade turning culture, work and consumer spending trends into conversation-driving stories. 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