3 Reasons Why No One Reads Your Emails: Email Communication Tips

Frustrated because it seems like no one reads your emails? Here are 3 reasons why this happens with some email communication tips to start doing today.

If you feel like nobody reads or even opens your emails, you’re not alone. Here are three reasons why your recipients are trashing or ignoring your messages.

1. Your emails are too wordy.
2. Your email subject lines are impersonal.
3. Your message looks like spam.

Reason #1: Your emails are too wordy.

Text-based messages overflowing with words are not very engaging. If you have tons of instructions or information typed in a teeny-tiny font with super-long sentences and paragraphs, chances are your recipient won’t read the whole thing unless you are super-duper important. (And, let’s face it, most of us aren’t.)

If you must include a lot of information, make sure the most important stuff is at the top. But an even better way to get your message across is to use visuals. We are a visual society that responds much better to messages with multi-media components, like videos, pictures, and surveys.

Your best options for engaging your readers involve adding one or more of visual stimuli to your text. To put it simply, less words, more visuals.

Reason #2: Your email subject lines are impersonal.

Billions of emails are sent every day. This means that even before your recipients read your email they have already waded through numerous OTHER emails trying to pick the most important ones to read. How do they make this selection? By your subject line. Unless you give your recipient a really good reason to open your message, they probably won’t.

One tip to increase your open rate is to include your recipient’s first name in the subject line. When wading through a sea of messages that look like they were also sent to hundreds of other people, personalization catches your eye.

Reason #3: Your message looks spammy.

Spammy is technically not a real word, but I think you get my point. If your email looks “junky,” chances are it won’t either be opened or read. This issue and the previous one about subject lines are somewhat related. For instance:

• Subject lines that only say “hi” or include misspellings of common words look suspicious, unless you truly know the sender (and know they’re not a great speller).
• If it looks like a big “group” email, there’s less reason for your recipient to do something with your message. Sending the exact same message to a bunch of other people just means there are lots of other people who can take responsibility for the content. “Passing the buck,” in a way...

To solve the problem of looking too “spammy,” just do the reverse: create clear and accurate subject lines, and customize your message to each recipient.

It might sound like improving these three areas will take a lot of time, but new email communication technology has grown by leaps and bounds and produces great results when used effectively. Learn more about Ving here.