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September 27, 2006

E-mail from a trusted source?

Today I received an e-mail from Scot Ullrich. And another from Gregory, from Mark and from someone billed as “Your.”

Since I don’t know any of these people, I deleted the e-mails without reading them. And that reminded me that a key criteria for whether e-mail users open/read their messages is the sender’s address. Obviously, when someone you know well sends you a message, you’re likely to read it. When someone you know only slightly sends you an e-mail, you might read it right away, might save it for later, or might never read it. And when you get an e-mail from an unknown source, the odds are high that the message will go unread.

None of this is news, but here’s the part that might surprise you: Employees in your company don’t necessarily know the names of executives and functional leaders. They probably know the CEO, and the name of the person leading their division or function, but after that, all those names become a blur.

This was demonstrated a couple of years ago, when a client of ours that was facing adversity, wanted to share financial information with employees. In an effort to retain high performing leaders, the company was offering financial incentives for those leaders to stay with the organization. Since this was material information, it had to be disclosed publicly, and company management wanted to do the right thing and communicate why the decision had been made, and what it meant to employees.

Here’s where good intentions went awry. The decision was made to send an e-mail from the SVP of Human Resources (let’s call him “Scot Ullrich”) to all employees. Only trouble was, about a third of employees deleted the message without reading it. Why? Some just had an itchy “delete” trigger finger, but a follow-up inquiry revealed that many other employees had no idea who Scot was. He didn’t have any visibility within the organization. So his name meant nothing to employees.

Please consider this as you’re planning your e-mail program. Remember that just because you and your colleagues in headquarters know all the leaders (because of what you do every day), employees simply don’t know the faces or the names. So think about whether the message sent is from a trusted (or even recognizable) sender.

Posted by Alison Davis at September 27, 2006 05:43 PM