I just picked up a book by Cal Newport called “A World Without Email.”
I haven’t gotten into it beyond some reviews and summaries. I do recommend his book “Deep Work” and “Digital Minimalism.” Both are excellent.
However, I believe advisors are WAY over-addicted to email for client and staff communications and unreasonable expectations for it’s value as a marketing “nurture” tool.
For my companies I’d pretty much written off email Pre-Covid. The Pandemic did breath some new life into it for communications – many more parents had to pay attention to their email for the new “Home Schooling” happening and working from home exploded with greater than ever needs for paying attention to email. So for the last 12 month’s it’s been brought back from “Near-Death.”
Why am I so negative about email?
Well, don’t get me wrong. I wrote a book on effective Internet Marketing back in 1999, that’s when search was about Alta Vista and Yahoo’s Directory. Pay per click was “Go To” served as inspiration for Google’s revenue model. Back then I LOVED email. However, that was only a year after the movie “You’ve Got Mail” which among other things showed Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan logging into their AOL and impatiently waiting for the “you’ve got mail” with a little mailbox flag popping up.
How’s that work now?
Here’s some stats I found in a random search:
There were 306.4 billion emails sent and received daily in 2020. (Source: Statista)
Well, now that we’ve talked about how many emails are sent per day, let’s dig deeper.
· There are more than 149,513 emails sent each minute.
· The number is around 121 emails daily for an office worker.
· The average number of emails a person sends a day for business communication is 40.
I think the number is way UNDERSTATED for most. I’d guess 200+ a day is more likely. You and I both know that NO ONE is pulling up Gmail or, Outlook with a “You’ve Got Mail” type of anticipation.
What’s more likely, if your email gets into their in-box and doesn’t get dumped by Google, Yahoo or whoever and, doesn’t end up in the “Spam” or “Promotions” file, is that the receiver is annoyed at sorting through the avalanche to find the important stuff. At the very least they’re not in a particularly good mood when they get there and often your “Important” stuff like the “E-Sign” doc you need back today get lost in the avalanche.
My rule for clients is mostly, I don’t use email. For staff it’s “if you send me something that’s important, text me so that I’ll go look for it.” For everyone else? Let’s just say I have a BUNCH of unread emails, never to be seen again, unless encouraged to go look for it (thank goodness for search functions.
For clients, I know that we have stuff we need to send to them. When possible, I’d send note cards, reports, etc physically. In other words “Snail Mail,” “FedEx” or whatever. I quick “googling” reports that the average household receives and average of 9 pieces of direct mail PER WEEK. I’m guessing you get more than that, certainly I do (I get more Amazon Boxes than that,) but compared to AT LEAST 800+ emails a week it’s a HUGE difference.
When you have something that needs “E-Sign” or, that links the client back to updates on their portfolio, I’d suggest that you text them and let them know that it’s (hopefully) just arrived in their email. For good measure a phone call a few minutes after it was sent (if possible to coordinate) is a nice touch.
With regard to “Lead Nurture” – well, that’s an important topic. One that could be a book, and certainly I won’t cover it well right here…. Maybe later.
However, for all of my businesses and clients I always create “Sequential Auto-Responder” as well as ongoing Newsletter type subscriptions that include outbound phone calls, text messaging, “ringless” voicemail, direct mail, Facebook Re-Targeting and Google Re-Targeting. Text messaging is still in the “You’ve Got Mail” phase for most – nearly 100% deliverability and nearly 100% open rate. It’s much less likely to be missed or ignored than email.
Let me just leave you with one thought, the major software “Nirvana” is in the search for the permanent replacement and elimination of email. We use Slack and Basecamp. Not perfect solutions however, I’d note there is a huge amount of money and time directed at eliminating the burden of email and fixing the number of tasks that get lost in the avalanche.
Stephen Oliver
CEO
Wealth Mastery
StephenOliver@
www.AdvisorWealthMastery.com
