Krug: You Don't Email Effectively, And It Shows

“Hey, didya get that email I sent? The one about how you completely destroyed the Snotsworthy account? Yeah, I’d like a reply to that one, buddy. You screwed the pooch, and I need to hear back from you, pronto.” – Sent via email, by a random idiot with whom you work.

• • •

Infinite inventions, innovations and breakthroughs have come to life in our days. The best and brightest have sent men to the moon, discovered new species and cured diseases. We’ve even created Hot Pockets. And somewhere amidst all of that gloriousness and brave thinking, someone invented email. That person, in fact, is V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai. In an interview with Time magazine in 2011, he said that he started working on electronic mail messaging – at age 14 – in 1978 as a means of recreating an existing intranet messaging system and created it, “purely out of the love of doing it.” Mr. Ayyadurai, on behalf of all mankind, my most sincere apology for destroying your contribution to society. Email could have been one of the greatest creations in the history of the world, allowing people to communicate with each other in meaningful ways through the power of the written word sent at warp speed through a series of wires and across satellites to a recipient that is thousands of miles away, awaiting word of some critical news that will shake them to their very core. Instead, we use it to send messages to the guy sitting behind us. “YoYoYoYo!… U gettin up into some savory deliciousness at/around the noonish – dawg???????” Which, of course, translated from the Millennial and repaired for grammatical coherence, poses the age-old question, “Will you be eating lunch today, my friend, and may I join you?” And to be clear, this message traveled through a complex series of highly engineered steps, circumnavigated the globe and came to a stop four feet away from the point of origin. Gads.

• • •

Emails are the lowest denomination of communication. Most are little more than dirty pennies that should stay stuck to gum on a Times Square sidewalk. Texts are a slightly higher form of communication because they are almost always personal and Autocorrect can make them unintentionally hilarious. There is also another case for emails: Because I am not a 15-year-old, I only receive about five texts a day – most of them from my 15-year-old. I can deal with five texts a day. But emails, that’s a different story. I receive about 250 a day. Now that’s all-in. That would be everything that I funnel into my phone from my work account and my home account. After I weed out the latest offers from The Gap, Men’s Wearhouse, Jos. A. Bank, Nordstrom and Stub Hub (each of which keeps in touch with me better than my sibling ever could), I am left staring at about 225 emails a day to sort through. Some I open. Most I can’t, because it would become my entire job to thoroughly read and then thoughtfully reply to each. I’ve got other non-email things to do – plenty of them. And so do you. Back in the old days, when I captained the media’s version of the Lusitania, I would receive about 500 emails a day, again all-in. I would check my email every hour on the hour, always keeping a keen eye across the horizon from that heat-seeking missile from the guy one peg up the pole and those from the most random of readers whose subject lines included the words “I WILL BLOW UP YOUR HOUSE.” Those threats never came to fruition but always warranted acknowledgement. And then a quick call to the police.

• • •

There is a point to be made in this column, I swear. So let me get cracking on that now. Emails are a good idea gone bad. They are often a mechanism for cowards, those in a rush and the painfully passive aggressive to communicate. In fact, the artists in those categories have elevated the act of emailing to an art form. Don’t want to confront someone that has done something wrong? No problem, my friend. Just send them an email. Forget about that cellular device attached to your hip, tap out some angst, press the send button, and then smile. Mission accomplished, you are the weakest leader in the history of leadership. Your bust in Douche-ville Hall of Fame is awaiting your approval. Email is the preferred weapon of the duckers-and-coverers, a medium where difficult questions can be asked and where confrontation can be avoided. And, hey, if you infuriate the person on the other end of an email, you got your point across, and you didn’t have to be there to deal with it. Congratulations, you are a soulless, wheezing wussbag. Afraid to ask for a day off or to take some vacation time, just send it along in an email. You want to take off Friday and it’s noon on Thursday? The perfect method for communicating this is via email. Because, hey, maybe the boss won’t read it until it’s too late to respond and, well, gee, gosh, golly, you’ve already booked that flight to Bugtussle, and it’s non-refundable. C’mon, boss, you can’t say “no” now, can you? That would make you a meanie. Enough already.

• • •

Emails aren’t all bad. It’s really about the volume of them and the overwhelming percentage that are off point. Want to send along a spreadsheet that I couldn’t otherwise work with? Great. Blast away. Email has that all over the fax, or working in The Cloud, with the angels in the heavens. That’s perfect use for the medium. And go ahead, put a nice little note on the email body that accompanies that spreadsheet. I’ll even wink back at your awful emoticon, because what you sent me was worthwhile. Go ahead, send me an email that was also sent to a group of people about an announcement that isn’t earth shattering, but stands as a nice-to-know piece of information. I can print it out, like an old-timer, and put it into a file for the next time I need to remind someone about this information when they claim that they didn’t receive the email. (Their name is on there, too, so nice going, Ace.) And, by all means, send me an email that lets me know how you are doing. I know your fingers are too fat to text, and it’s 1 a.m. and you can’t sleep, and we haven’t spoken for a few months. It’s always great to hear from a friend. Oh, and feel free to email this to someone who misuses email. Make sure you put an emoticon in there somewhere.

• • •

As always… Stay classy. Chris Krug is president of the progressive media communications firm No Limit Agency* in Chicago. No Limit is a full-service agency whose practice focuses on strategy, brand management, creative campaigns and delivering unparalleled placement in the media. No Limit Agency works with some of the best-known brands in North America, and that’s not a coincidence. Contact Krug by calling 312-526-3996 or via email at [email protected].