How to ask for an introduction by email

An introduction request is really two emails in one. The top is a private note to somebody who knows you. The bottom is a paragraph for a stranger, and that is the part that gets forwarded. Most requests fail because they are written as one piece, which leaves the connector working out which sentences are for them and which a stranger is supposed to read.

Length matters more than style here. Boomerang's analysis of the email its users tracked found that “the sweet spot for email length is between 50-125 words, all of which yielded response rates above 50%” (2016). The same analysis found that subject lines of three or four words drew the most responses. Keep your note at the short end of that. The block underneath has a different reader, so it does not count against the note, which is why the whole email can be long and still feel quick.

There is a mechanical reason too. Forwarding means selecting text, or hitting forward and deleting half of it, usually on a phone and usually between two other things. A bio wrapped around an ask, a first-person paragraph they would have to rewrite, an attachment they have to re-attach: each one adds a delay, and delays turn into nevers.

Who to ask, how often, and what you owe them afterwards is a different question and it has its own page: how to ask for a warm introduction.

Finding the connector is a search, not a memory test. Happenstance reads the accounts you connect, Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, and answers questions about your own network in plain English. Ask “Who do I know at Halyard, and how do I know them?” and the answer comes back ranked, with the evidence attached: years of email back and forth, a meeting on a calendar, an old shared employer, or nothing but a connection accepted once. That difference is the difference between an introduction that gets forwarded and one that gets a polite reply.

It also answers the version of the question you can't search your inbox for, “who do I know who knows Jordan Whitfield”, where the path runs through somebody you'd never have thought of. Groups and friends widen a search past your own accounts and into the networks of people you trust. Happenstance is free. The free plan is the whole product, with usage limits on chat and web searches beyond your network. Pro raises the limits: unlimited web searches and results, higher chat limits, and CSV export.

If you're writing this email to get into a company rather than a room, Happenstance for job seekers is the version of this aimed at hiring, and warm introductions covers how the paths are found.

One template is the full artifact, both halves, for a connector you email a few times a year. The other is what you send someone you are in a thread with every week, where a formal request would read as strange. Replace everything in brackets and keep the dashes.

The short version deliberately holds the block back. Offering to send a paragraph is a smaller thing to say yes to than receiving one, and it gives you a second message in which to write the good version once you know they are in. A connector who replies asking whether they can put it to her first is running a double opt-in, which is the best reply this email can get. What they write next, once both sides are in, is the introduction email itself. If the only route you have to your connector runs through a platform, asking for an introduction on LinkedIn covers what that one can and can't do.