By Janus Boye
From the call with Ashley Budd and Day Kibilds
There's a new book on email coming and it’s written by two of our friends who really believe in good emails:
Ashley Budd, Senior Director of Advancement Marketing at Cornell University and also a speaker at HE Connect 22
Day Kibilds, Strategist at marketing agency Ologie
They have seen what a good email program can do. But, unfortunately, they are also reminded daily what a terrible experience combing through your email inbox can be.
Powerful email programs can get people to do stuff–for better or worse. And lucky for them, they get to see email do good every day.
In a member's call back in the summer, we heard more about the emerging book and the authors shared some of their key email insights. We also looked at bad emails and most importantly, supported them on their writing journey.
Below I’ve shared a few highlights from the call and also an update on the book. The big news here in December, is that the manuscript is now completed and the authors are partnering with independent book publisher Greenleaf Book Group to publish the email book in 2024. Greenleaf has published 60+ New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers and has an award-winning editorial and design team.
A new book on email, really?
Ashley opened by reminding us that everytime she speaks about email, people trash it. They hate email so much. Email is the worst. As she said:
“Email is terrible and we have to make this better.”
The new book will cover how to make email more enjoyable and more effective. Since April they’ve been working on the chapters, in the summer a rough draft was ready, and then they started shopping it to publishers.
Day also shared how they have been approaching the topic from two complementary angles. As Day said: Ashley’s focus is on making things interesting and fun, while her focus is more on making emails actionable, how should we write it and what should it look like.
Day also added that some people think that email marketing is trickery and that’s not this book. It’s also not a large textbook.
Actually, it turns out that there isn’t really a book like this out there. Most of the existing literature on the topic of email is really all about email marketing. This book sets out to do something different.
What’s in the new book on email?
Similarly to when you linger on a fitting email subject line, back when we had the call, they still hadn’t settled on the book title. Here’s the two main potential ideas for the book title that we heard:
Email for action
Better email
Getting into the contents of the book, Ashley shared how she has used her background as a communications history nerd to think about how communication has evolved over time. Today, email has become unavoidable and in the US, it is even the primary means to communicate with the government. Everyone has and needs an email. You need email to function as a citizen and in the workplace. Email has become a utility tool that we have to deal with. We have to check our email and we have to manage it.
Email is noticeably different from social media and other forms of written communication. Ashley has led a chapter on ‘good content’, which is really about what makes an email good. Empathy and being kind to the reader is important. To put things in perspective, Ashley shared this tangible example:
“Your best email to receive in 2023 can be a terribly formatted email from your grandmother”
Day has taken the lead on chapters focusing on strategy, how do you do email at scale, planning it out, addressing different audiences and also considering what level of personalisation adds value vs. creating extra work. Many examples in the book center around higher education where both have vast experience.
A section of the book that Day highlighted is all about what the actual email looks like. That’s not all about a fancy design, but more how you lay things out so that people can scan them fast. What should the subject line be and in which parts of the email should you put the key content. Day cited NNGroup research on how people read online, which showed that looking back at findings from a series of eyetracking studies over 13 years, fundamental scanning behaviors remain constant, even as designs change.
The book will also cover how you make emails to your colleagues super effective, including how to navigate the internal approval process, which can be daunting to say the least.
Finally, the authors also briefly shared their thinking on how you measure email success. Again, the book is not aiming to be a textbook, nor very technical. At a high-level the authors plan to cover how you can measure that we are doing better and that your email content is good.
We then moved onto asking the participants what they would want from an email book.
What would you like to have in the book?
First we heard from Stratos Filalithis, Head of Website at the University of Edinburgh. He shared how email can be perceived as a dark art. He would in particular look for straight-forward tips for writing better email, in particular any insights on how to get people to read his email. In a large, old and complex organisation, like the University of Edinburgh, it’s natural that people react better and respond quicker to email that comes from someone who is close to them, but when it comes from someone unknown, like in the central administration, it’s trickier. How do I get the folks out there to read my important emails?
Then we heard from Marc Pönitz, SVP Corporate Communications at global PR and marketing agency FleishmanHillard in their Düsseldorf office. He was really curious about where to put the interesting details, and also perspective on how long the email should be? Younger colleagues recently told him that using punctuation in a chat makes the conversation very serious and in a work context, makes people think that they have done something wrong. Similarly with communicating over email and also with clients, how do we keep the right length and tone of voice?
We then moved to Hamburg, where Britta Müller-Ruhnau joined us from RTL. She looked at it from the other perspective - that of the recipient. If you want to do well as a good corporate citizen, you have to read all your emails, but how do you deal with it? It’s not uncommon to get (many) more emails than you can handle and then when are you expected to respond? How do you work during the day with email, and to put things in perspective, even if the email is fantastic and world-class, if I’m overwhelmed I still may not respond as quickly as the sender would like.
As the final perspective, we moved to Bristol, where Simon Ashley is Head of Online at Ecotricity. He raised the point that the number of different communication channels keeps going up. At Ecotricity they’ve started using WhatsApp, also for customers, and that’s yet another channel to manage. Where does email fit best into the mix?
We haven’t reached peak email
Ashley picked up on all the helpful input and as terrifying as it may sound, one of the things they do talk about in the book is the continued growth of email.
You are going to keep getting more and the arrival of tools like ChatGPT will likely make it worse. Perhaps a good time to share this helpful reminder which keeps circulating the Internet:
“Email: A to do list made for you by other people”
As Ashley said, we can hope that the email tools will keep getting more sophisticated, so that junk email gets filtered away and your email tool can help prioritise the many emails you receive.
The good news with email is that similarly to your website, it’s a channel that you own and control. Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, or other channels, where someone else is in charge of the algorithm and also the long-term destiny of your content.
Email is in particular strong for acquisition and opening the conversation to new folks. At Cornell they use text messaging heavily for those they already have a relationship with and that’s great when you are already in touch and you feel closer to the sender.
Email has a different role and we closed with some tangible examples of what was said in the opening. Email can be the worst
Four things that makes email suck
First, Day started with one of the things that really annoys her. When an email opens with something like “if this applies to you”. The person sending the email should already know that. Do a better job with audience segmentation.
Then Ashley shared how subject lines can make you feel bad. Like pushing hard on FOMO and writing things like “You are going to lose out”. Don’t take me down and make me unhappy.
Back to Day, who said that too wordy emails are the worst. Don’t make them too long. Email today has to be conversational.
Finally, Ashley continued on this note and added how respecting the recipient is crucial. Most people have less than a minute to react to your email. She recommends using services like the Hemingway editor, to check reading time and making sure that your email can be read in a minute tops.
Learn more about better emails
The book has a website simply titled: Email book, where you can track progress and sign up for the pre-sale list. The authors also offer email workshops for your organisation.
Ashley hosted one of our most popular 2022 calls which was titled: How to create emails that people want. At the very beginning of 2017, I also wrote this piece: Out of office messages - a missed opportunity?
The conversation on email naturally continues in our peer groups and at our upcoming conferences. Join us and be a part of the conversation.
Finally, there were no slides in the call, but you can lean back and enjoy the recording below.