{"id":225,"date":"2016-05-02T15:31:05","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T15:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/speakingasaleader\/?p=225"},"modified":"2016-05-02T15:32:23","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T15:32:23","slug":"6-ways-to-get-your-email-ignored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/speakingasaleader\/6-ways-to-get-your-email-ignored\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Ways to Get your Email Ignored"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2010, 294 billion emails were sent per day for a total of 90 trillion in the full year. 1.9 billion users sent an email during 2010. \u00a0The average business user in a 1,000 user organisation receives 110 emails per day (of which 13 are spam) and sends 36 emails. \u00a0(source Radicati Group Email Statistics Report 2010<\/a>)<\/p>\n

How do you ensure that your email gets acted upon?<\/h2>\n

When you send to friends and have regular contact\u00a0they will act because they know your name.<\/p>\n

When you send to someone who may not know your name: what must you do to break out of the forest of spam? \u00a0How do you avoid the delete button?<\/p>\n

\"5379549514_d114e30bed_b\"
Photo Credit: Matt McGee<\/a> via Compfight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

6 ways to end up ignored in an inbox<\/h2>\n

I read a little section of Jeffrey Pfeffer\u2019s book \u201cPower: Why some people have it and Other\u2019s don\u2019t<\/a>\u201d where he talked about poorly thought through requests for his help via email.<\/p>\n

He outline 4 ways to fail to engage the reader when you ask for some help via email:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Fail to indicate the social connection<\/b> between sender and reader \u2013 where did you meet? \u00a0who put you in contact?<\/li>\n
  2. Fail to understand the readers perspective<\/b> \u2013 what context (background information) does the reader need to take a decision\/act upon the email?<\/li>\n
  3. Fail to explain why the reader was specifically selected<\/b> as a source of potential help.<\/li>\n
  4. Fail to show that sender has already made some effort<\/b> to understand the domain before asking for help.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    I would add two further failures that I see in email requests<\/div>\n
    \n
      \n
    1. Fail to keep it short<\/b>. \u00a0Many emails are much too long \u2013 the sender has no edit process before sending the \u201cdraft\u201d email. \u00a0 I was referred to a nice email policy called three.sentenc.es<\/a> by a recent blog post from Mark Suster. \u00a0The requirement to write your email in 3 sentences forces you to be concise.<\/li>\n
    2. Fail to clarify exactly what is wanted<\/b>: No effort to clarify what you are asking for. \u00a0\u201cHelp\u201d is too vague. \u00a0I expand on this below.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n

      How to clarify your communication objective:<\/h2>\n

      In my classes on communication at IESE I start by making every student define their objective prior to starting to prepare any communication. \u00a0This might sound too basic to be important, but I can guarantee that more failure in communication occurs because the requester really has not clarified what they want and thought about whether it is realistic to expect.<\/p>\n

      Finish this sentence: \u201cWhen the reader has finished reading this email he will _________________\u201d<\/p>\n

      The sentence must be completed with an active verb. \u00a0\u201cmeet on thursday\u201d, \u201cphone me immediately\u201d, \u201cvote for me\u201d, \u201cvisit my web site\u201d are all active. \u00a0\u201cunderstand more about the situation\u201d is not active. \u00a0Most communication fails at this step \u2013 lack of clarity of the realistic, do-able, specific next action that will move you closer to your overall objective.<\/p>\n

      Over to you<\/h2>\n

      How can you improve the next email that you are about to send?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      In 2010, 294 billion emails were sent per day for a total of 90 trillion in the full year. 1.9 billion users sent an email during 2010. \u00a0The average business user in a 1,000 user organisation receives 110 emails per day (of which 13 are spam) and sends 36 emails. \u00a0(source Radicati Group Email Statistics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":239,"featured_media":228,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27335,8109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improved-communication","category-posts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/speakingasaleader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/speakingasaleader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/speakingasaleader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/speakingasaleader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/speakingasaleader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/speakingasaleader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/speakingasaleader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/speakingasaleader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/speakingasaleader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/speakingasaleader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/speakingasaleader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}