I'm sure everyone out there gets email intros. Someone who knows you sends you and someone you don't know an email suggesting you meet.
I send emails like that a lot. I might send a half a dozen or more every day.
I get even more emails like that. Sometimes dozens a day.
And I'd like to propose some email intro etiquette which I follow almost religiously myself:
When introducing two people who don't know each other, ask each of them to opt-in to the introduction before making it.
Last night I got talking about this with some friends who also get a lot of email intros. All of us get email intros that we don't want to follow up on. Some just ignore them. Others reply with something like "I'm really busy now and will get back to you in a month." And then never do.
I don't really like either of those two solutions and I also don't like responding to an introduction email with something like "I'm sorry but I don't really want to meet you".
So I often take meetings in these situations that I don't really want to take. And that means I'm less available to meet with people I do want to meet.
My friends said that I should simply keep track of who is giving me bad intros and let them know about it. I'm sure that I should be doing that and probably am at some level.
But I think asking for permission to make an email intro before making it is good form. I try to do it as a matter of practice. And I wish more people would.
