Eszter Hargittai writes a sensible list of tips on cold emailing someone.  Among other tips such as avoiding unprofessional email addresses, the article offers the following:

• Descriptive subject line
• Polite point-of-contact
• Succinct statement of the message’s purpose
• Brief introduction of yourself
• Acknowledging other attempts at finding an answer or solution
• Restatement of question
• Gratitude for assistance

Email has made desklife more of a pain.  At the same time, it has also made people far more accessible. I will say that I have emailed (unsolicited) and connected with people that I would have probably never connected with 10 years ago.  I'm thinking of practicing lawyers and law profs.  

As for the list, I would only add:  (1) avoid attachments and (2) feel free to massage the recipient's ego.  Even incredibly busy people have something they will respond to.  If you touch upon this you can start a geniuine dialogue. 

[Of course, it goes without saying that failing to follow basic protocol can cause problems in the professional realm.  A recent appellate court case from Ohio makes this point starkly. See Grano v. City of Mentor, 2006 Ohio 6104, P29 (Ohio Ct. App. 2006): 

Their attorney signed the request for admissions and gave his email address as [email protected]. . . . The email transmission to Attorney Hennig reflected that the sender of the email had an email address of [email protected]; and no subject was reflected in the subject line. . . . . the trial court, in effect, stated that the city acted reasonably in deleting the email for lack of an identifiable sender [or subject line]. We agree. . . . The city acted reasonably in deleting the suspicious email. . . . the nature of electronic transmissions is such, especially with email communications containing a large quantity of spam, that attorneys should be scrupulous in identifying themselves and their subject in the sender and the subject lines in order to avoid this kind of confusion. Had appellants' attorney identified himself with his own email address and inserted a subject heading into the subject line of the email, the city would have less reason to justify their untimely request to respond to the request for admissions.

Eszter's tips sound obvious enough.  Nevertheless, they are obviously worth repeating.]  [via Lifehacker]