How to cut through the digital noise.
Our digital lives are accelerating at an alarming rate. Every week we get more emails, more websites go live, we are influenced by more and more digital adverts. An outstanding, 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data is generated each day.
With such a vast amount of digital pollution, it’s easy for the most important messages to get lost. As of 2018, there are about 124.5 billion business emails sent and received each day, an extraordinary number!
So how does one stand out among such a vast sea of content? There is quite a simple formula… it’s called following up. When sending an email it is very important to outline the response that you want to evoke. You need to define what action you want the other person to take after receiving your email, most importantly, however, you need to receive a clear response. “Yes is good, no is good’, but unanswered emails fall into the trap of “maybe”. “Maybe” is no good to decision makers as it doesn’t provide any clear feedback. “Maybe” is where new companies go to die as it provides false hope.
The trick here is to follow up indefinitely. People are busy, they have ever more busy lives! Just because answering your email isn’t their first priority doesn’t mean they hate you, your company or your idea, it just means that something more important is happening in their lives right now! If I don’t get a response, I don’t automatically assume that person doesn’t want anything to do with me, I will send a follow-up email a few days later, and a few days after that… until I get a clear response. I never refer back to the previous emails, the goal isn’t to guilt trip the person into opening your email. The goal is to get clear results either a yes or a no. Getting a negative response is just as good as getting a positive response, it gives you clear meaningful data to analyse.
The truth is, in business I would prefer to have 7 people that are inspired to work with me, and have 3 who hate me or are annoyed by me than have 10 people who are completely indifferent about my existence.
Magic happens when you follow up, just try it and you’ll see for yourself!
James Gale
Swiftfox Apps