“So, how do you like to be reminded?” The question nobody asks

"So, how do you like to be reminded?" The question stings a little, because the honest answer is: I don't. Nobody enjoys the message that points out they haven't done what they were supposed to do.

But the reminder comes anyway. So it might as well land in the right place: an email for some, a text for others, a call for those who never read anything. How do you like to be reminded? Almost nobody has ever asked you. Here's why the question matters on both sides, and what studies say about channels.

Why does nobody like being reminded?

Because a reminder says, however kindly: you're late. And because it often arrives through a channel you didn't choose, at the wrong moment.

The phone is the clearest example. In the UK, an Opinium survey of 2,000 adults carried out for the comparison site Uswitch in April 2024 found that 23% of 18 to 34-year-olds say they never pick up calls, and 56% assume an out-of-the-blue call means bad news (Uswitch (opens in a new tab)). In the US, "eight-in-ten Americans" say they don't generally answer their cellphone when an unknown number calls (survey of 10,211 adults in July 2020, Pew Research Center (opens in a new tab)).

That reflex has a cause: cold calling. In France, in a September 2023 survey by the consumer group UFC-Que Choisir (990 respondents), 72% say they get sales calls on their mobile at least once a week, 49% get at least one marketing text a week, and 97% find it irritating (UFC-Que Choisir (opens in a new tab), in French). A legitimate reminder lands on a phone already saturated with messages nobody wants.

And why is it so awkward to chase someone?

The other side isn't any more comfortable. You're afraid of being a pest, of offending, of looking like you're keeping tabs. So you put it off, soften it, apologise for writing, and sometimes simply forget.

That awkwardness often rests on a misreading, which we covered in how to follow up without being pushy: the person chasing imagines an irritation the other person, most of the time, doesn't even have time to feel. But there's a second, quieter mistake: we chase through the channel that suits us. Email because we're at our desk, a text because it's quick, a call because we can't stand waiting any longer. Rarely the one the other person actually reads.

Is a reminder you expect still a reminder?

That's the whole difference between a reminder and a solicitation. The law already draws the line: for email marketing, France's data protection authority, the CNIL, notes that the rule is that "people must have given their consent before being contacted" (CNIL (opens in a new tab), in French). A message you're expecting isn't received like a message you're subjected to.

And expected reminders work. A Cochrane review of eight randomised trials (6,615 participants) on medical appointments found attendance rates of 67.8% with no reminder, 78.6% with a text reminder and 80.3% with a phone call reminder (Gurol-Urganci et al., Cochrane, 2013 (opens in a new tab)). The text does almost as well as the call, for far less effort.

A trial at Geneva University Hospitals with 6,450 patients points the same way: 11.7% missed appointments in the group reminded by text, 10.2% in the group reminded by phone, and three quarters of the patients surveyed recommended making the reminder standard practice (BMC Health Services Research, 2013 (opens in a new tab)).

Tone matters as much as channel. In the UK, the Behavioural Insights Team tested texts sent to people who hadn't paid a court fine despite a letter. With no text, the average payment was £4.46; with a text that used the person's first name, £12.87 (Haynes et al., 2013 (opens in a new tab)). And for questionnaires sent by post, a Cochrane review of 481 trials shows that a follow-up clearly increases the odds of a response (odds ratio of 1.35, Edwards et al., Cochrane, 2009 (opens in a new tab)).

In other words: following up isn't the problem. Following up blindly is.

Which channel do people prefer?

There's no single answer, and that's precisely the point. What the numbers mostly show is that preferences vary from person to person and from situation to situation.

• Messaging apps are now everyday life. In France, 64% of the population uses an instant messaging app every day, and it isn't just a young people's thing: 79% of 12 to 17-year-olds, 73% of 18 to 24-year-olds, 78% of 25 to 39-year-olds and 70% of 40 to 59-year-olds exchange messages on them daily (Crédoc, Baromètre du numérique 2026 (opens in a new tab), in French, survey of 4,145 people in June 2025).
• People go where the others are. In the same survey, 66% of users say they chose their messaging app first and foremost because their contacts use it.
• When things get complicated, people want to talk to someone. Faced with a difficulty in an online administrative procedure, the preferred channel is a phone conversation with an official (44%), ahead of an in-person desk (34%) and contact by email (34%). Post is cited by only 10% of respondents, but by 15% of 18 to 24-year-olds (Crédoc (opens in a new tab)).
• Email gets opened a little over one time in three. The average open rate measured by Mailchimp across its customers' campaigns is 35.63%, with a warning from the company itself: Apple Mail Privacy Protection skews open rates (Mailchimp (opens in a new tab), data from December 2023). These are marketing emails, not personal reminders, but the order of magnitude is a reminder that an email sent is not an email read.

What about the famous "98% of text messages are read"? We went looking for the source: no published study, no method, only pages from SMS vendors quoting each other. We're not repeating it.

Remember this instead: the same person doesn't have the same preferred channel for a routine reminder and for an emergency. The person who ignores unknown numbers picks up when it's their children's school. The one who only reads email on Mondays answers a text within the hour.

How do you ask someone how they prefer to be reminded?

Simply, at the time of the first request, when nothing is late yet. Ask two questions: the usual channel, and the channel for emergencies. Nobody takes offence, and most people are surprised you thought of it.

At the start of a working relationship, by email:

Hello [First name],

I'll be asking you for a few documents over the coming weeks. So I don't bother you in the wrong place, two quick questions:

1. If I need to send you a reminder, would you rather have an email, a text or a WhatsApp message?
2. And if it's genuinely urgent, what's the best way to reach you?

A two-word answer is plenty.
Thanks,
[Your first name]

By text, in one line:

Hi [First name], it's [Your first name]. For reminders about your file, do you prefer text, email or WhatsApp? And if it's urgent, a call or a message?

In a form or a contact card, two fields are enough:

Preferred contact method, normally: email / text / WhatsApp / call / post
Preferred contact method, if urgent: email / text / WhatsApp / call / post

Then keep your word. If someone chose email, don't call them about a document that can wait until Monday. And save the emergency channel for real emergencies: an emergency channel used for everything soon stops being one. For the wording of the reminders themselves, from the first nudge to the last message, see our six missing document reminder email templates. And if you're collecting documents from a whole group, add a "preferred channel" column to your tracking sheet, as in collect documents from multiple people.

What if the person being reminded got to choose?

A little over twenty years ago, I wrote the dissertation for my Mastère Spécialisé (a postgraduate specialised master's) at HEC Paris and the École des Mines de Paris on this very subject: Optimum Use of Communication in Virtual Teams, or how teams working remotely choose their means of communication. Several of the virtual team members I interviewed described the same thing: email for routine requests, then, when no reply came, the phone, "to force a response". My conclusion was that everyone has their own habits and preferred channels, and that it's better to clarify expectations from the start: to agree, as Haywood suggested in 1998, on when and how each person can be reached, and how quickly they'll respond. Twenty years on, we still chase through the channel that suits the person chasing, and we still rarely ask the other person what works for them.

It's delicate on both sides: being reminded, and doing the reminding. The simplest answer is to finally ask the question, "how do you like to be reminded?", and let the person being reminded answer it themselves. That's what Please Send It does: everyone you ask for documents can state their usual preferred contact method and the one to use in an emergency, and the reminder sequence adapts to it, without you having to think about it.