This week I received an email from a training company asking me if I would like to attend some courses on social media marketing. This isn’t uncommon, I receive 100’s of emails every day, and as such I have learnt to speed read and delete emails that don’t grab my attention immediately.
But this one stood out, unfortunately it stood out for the wrong reasons…
The email stated “Take a look at our social media marketing courses taking place in Central London over the summer. Book early to get a 15% Early Bird saving.”
When I looked at the dates, all of them were for November, December and January.
You could argue it would be summer somewhere on our glorious planet, but I can guarantee that at that time of year in London it will be far from tropical!
So this got me thinking about email communication, how powerful it can be, and how easy it is to get wrong!
The Radicati Group in California have recently published that there are 4.1 billion email user accounts around the world. So, if you have a message that you want to get out there quickly and efficiently, email can be a really powerful tool.
The hardest part of email is getting someone to read it. The research goes on to detail that daily email traffic totals 191.4 billion. This means that on an average we each send and receive a total of 121 emails a day.
As volume of email traffic is so high, we have naturally evolved to become efficient at speed reading and deleting especially if we feel it is junk mail, a mistake, misspelling, or if the email is simply too boring to devote our time to it.
And it isn’t age related either. My wife and I recently had dinner with our daughter and her friends, all of which are in their early twenties, and all of whom are attached at the hip to their mobile phones devices.
So I asked them “do you read all of the emails, messages and texts that you get?” They all looked at me dumbfounded and said “No way”. I asked them why not? “Because there are so many”.
This led me onto to ask them “But what if it’s important, for example sorting out your next flat, or running late for work, or organising the next party?” All of them said “well we would phone.”
So, I wonder, was Doc Hollywood from the “Back to the Future” films onto something. Maybe taking a short step back in time is the right thing to do?
Think about how often you have heard a friend or colleague complain about how many emails they have in their inbox. In years gone by they would complain about the number of calls they received, but not anymore!
So what would have happened if the training company had telephoned me instead?
Well, for a starter I am pretty sure that they would not have mentioned the season of summer, and if they had been engaging, efficient, and qualified my interest in social media then I would have probably attended one of their courses.
So, what can we learn from my experience, and comments passed by my daughter’s friends? Quite simply, if it’s important, phone.