An average of 280 billion emails are sent every day. That’s quite a lot. And, on balance, quite wasteful: nearly 80 per cent of them are never opened or dispatched to the junk box on sight with the help of algorithms. While social media and other communications innovations continue to change the nature of sharing ideas, email remains a key tool of modern business. Marketers who want their emails to be read need to be aware of how to maximize chances that their messages are getting across and have the potential to be acted on.
Lying in wait
There’s a lot of email entering your inbox that is not overtly a waste of time, and still needs to be sorted through. In fact, of course, it’s often rather relevant to business. One recent estimate is that the typical office employee is bequeathed a nice, round sum of 100 emails every day, and that they have approximately 200 unread emails lurking at any given time in their inbox. That’s a lot of email. So how to get noticed and be seen as merely one more contributor to one more addition to someone’s inbox intake?
10am on Tuesday
That’s the optimal time for sending an email and having it read and acted upon, according to an extensive analysis of this modern-day, yet somewhat dated communication tool. By midmorning on the second day of the workweek, the last weekend has started to fade from memory and the approaching weekend seems a bit too far off to fully envision. This enhances productivity, the peak of which is 10am on Tuesday, a study shows.
Make it personal
A short but heartfelt ‘Good seeing you yesterday’ or ‘Thanks for the coffee’ to start things off gives your email a boost of about 17 per cent that it will be read. In an increasingly impersonal world, genuine signs of humanity are welcomed and encouraged. Emails with a polite but meaningful yet non-robotic reference to a shared occasion or common acquaintance will help keep your message from being ignored.
The Human & Digital Communications Agency
Our award-winning communications team blends human interactions & digital engagement seamlessly to produce results for brands.
