Have you ever had something important to say, taken the time to write it up in an email and send it out to your entire workforce just to be disheartened when nobody actually reads it? You’re not alone. Unfortunately, this is the situation that most managers and company owners face due to the fact that over 60 percent of employees ignore some internal emails every day.
Why is it that so many people are choosing not to read these emails? Here are some of the key reasons why your workplace emails might be getting ignored and what you can do to prevent this from happening.
Emails Are Too Lengthy
It is no secret that, in a full inbox of emails, a long block of text doesn’t exactly scream “read me”. It is no wonder why almost a third of marketing experts are working towards making their emails more easily digestible by using shorter sentences and more white space.
Most employees are hard at work throughout the day, so anything more than a 30-second distraction is going to be something that they try to avoid at all costs. Therefore, when a long email arrives in their inbox, they are likely going to skip over it entirely.
To help get more employees to read the emails even when they are busy, you should try using short sentences, small paragraphs, and big headings to create a layout that allows for easy scanning.
Emails Are CC’d to Everyone In the Office
There is nothing more frustrating for an employee than receiving many emails from their boss throughout the day, with only a few of them relevant. This makes the employee much less likely to read any future internal emails. For this reason, you should begin to practice the process of being more selective in who you send emails to.
For example, instead of typing up an email that provides tips or instructions for several departments and then just sending it out to everyone, you might want to turn that one long email into two or three short ones that are then sent to members of the relevant departments. This way, employees will know that if they are receiving an email from you, then it is going to contain relevant information to their position, which will make them much more likely to read it.
Emails Lack a Strong Narrative
When over 80 percent of industry professionals agree that narrative storytelling is one of the three most important factors in developing effective content, it is worth paying attention to. Unfortunately, not nearly enough companies are incorporating this strategy into their internal emails.
The result is that the majority of employees become bored with very standard copy and quickly make a conscious decision to start reading fewer and fewer work emails. To help prevent this from happening, make sure that you are incorporating as much storytelling into each one of your emails as possible. It will help to grab your employee’s attention and make them more likely to read all future emails as long as they all feature narrative storytelling as well.
With the help of these tips, you should begin to see a significant rise in the number of employees that read your emails. To improve your internal communications open rates even further, contact us today.
