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Ashley Budd, Author of Mailed It! 💌 | Senior Marketing Director at Cornell University | Nonprofit Consultant | Keynote Speaker
20 Plays1 month ago
In this episode of Escape Velocity, host Tracey Halvorsen sits down with Ashley Budd, higher education marketing expert and co-author of Mailed It!, to discuss how email remains one of the most powerful communication tools—when done right.
Ashley shares insights from her book, offering practical strategies and “hacks” for making email more effective in an era of overwhelming digital noise. From the importance of clear subject lines to the role of authenticity, empathy, and logic in building trust, Ashley breaks down the principles that help emails stand out and drive action.
The conversation touches on the evolution of email, how AI and automation are shaping inboxes, and why personalization isn’t just about inserting a name—it’s about delivering real value. Ashley also explains the impact of eye-tracking studies on email design, why institutions should embrace a more engaging and even humorous tone, and how a well-planned content strategy can transform audience engagement.
If you want to make your emails more impactful, reduce unsubscribe rates, and turn your email program into a relationship-building powerhouse, this episode is a must-listen.
🎧 Tune in to Escape Velocity to hear Ashley Budd’s expert take on how to cut through inbox chaos and make email work for you!
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Transcript
Introduction to Guests and 'Mailed It' Book
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello, this is Tracy Halverson, your host on Escape Velocity. And today I am joined by Ashley Budd, who is the co author of an awesome book called mailed it.
00:00:18
Speaker
um And your co author's name is Dayana. Am I saying that right? Dayana Kibbold. All right. Thank you. Yes. So thanks for joining me.
00:00:29
Speaker
Thanks for having me, Tracy. We have a lot to talk about. ah we yeah we were just talking before I hit
Disruption in Higher Education and Email Tips
00:00:36
Speaker
record. um Ashley works in higher ed. And so obviously there's a lot of disruption happening there and everywhere right now.
00:00:45
Speaker
yes But when we were just talking about what what value we wanted this conversation to to have for anyone who listens, it's like Ashley's going to so share her some tips, some hacks, as she calls them.
00:00:57
Speaker
and um And let's use these things for good. Yeah. Yeah. 25. We need more of that. What a time to be alive. heard someone say like, you don't get to pick the time human, you know, evolution that you get to live through. I'm like, whew, no kidding. Yeah.
00:01:19
Speaker
Wouldn't have picked this one probably. I don't know. I mean, I've also like, it's such an exciting time on a lot of fronts and it's such a terrifying time on a lot of fronts. So Yes. If you are up for a challenge.
00:01:33
Speaker
Yeah. wooi We got one. Yeah. Yeah. And it's complicated, right? Like yeah there are, there are, you have to be able to hold a lot of different things as being true at the same time right now. It's not a great time for, ah for anyone to think that it's just one thing.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. So that being said, um for anyone that's watching this and not just listening, I'm going to hold up the cover of the book. There she is. There she is. All my sticky notes sticking out of it.
00:02:05
Speaker
And once again, it's called mailed it, which I love. And I love your beginning too. It just sucked me right in just the storytelling. And the but it was something I could so relate to, even though, know, I'm,
00:02:17
Speaker
you know i'm I'm older than you. And I, when I first got my hands on, you know, my first, uh, AOL CD, you know, yeah can we reminisce please about the glory days of, of you've got mail.
00:02:32
Speaker
We had a whole rom-com about this. ah I mean, I used to think AOL was the internet at first, you know? Oh, yeah.
Nostalgia: Early Internet and Email's Longevity
00:02:40
Speaker
I was just sort of like, what is this? ah What? And, you know, i mean, I did what I had just gotten out of college and I went to art school. So I missed a lot of technology, but I was in terms of what was being shown to me.
00:02:54
Speaker
um But I was I've always been a a real geeky techie person. Yeah. You're so similar in that Tracy, yeah because I too went to school for painting, ye but picked the most, picked a technical university. Cause I'm a bit of a geek.
00:03:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. i picked I picked a program in for graduate school where I could like do whatever I wanted creatively. um So it was like painting and making, you know, stop motion digital films, oh ah you know,
00:03:27
Speaker
Which was great. Everybody was like, yep, that she's just doing her thing. um But I do remember, you know, were email is like the OG form of communication um in this revolutionary shift in the way that we communicate.
00:03:44
Speaker
communicate can communicate and can share information and share data and ah connect with each other. Yeah, it's really held strong. right Like the creators of this thing, they thought yeah they through. It's got what we need, right? We can send immediately, receive within seconds.
00:04:06
Speaker
We can send attachments. Right. Like there all these little like nuances. The subject line is really helpful to have. There's things that you don't have even in SMS or other communication channels that it's kind of got it all. And I think that that's why it's had this really long lifespan.
00:04:26
Speaker
um But it also got in our hands at the same time that we got the web. Yeah. And, you know, if we think about probably when it got into most people's hands was in the 90s.
00:04:41
Speaker
And by the early 2000s, we had social media. And I think we kind of skipped over the usefulness of email and web, quite frankly, in so many ways with social media giving us this ability to publish.
The Role of Email in the Digital Landscape
00:05:01
Speaker
And now we have kind of seen social media go full full course, full cycle, haven't we? Yeah. um these more reliable tools like email and our own websites our own properties that we own um have such a different kind of staying power. um One of the other things I think about and just the evolution of the tool and in this time I think a lot about my father in the actual post mailbox.
00:05:35
Speaker
And in the same time, right in the nineties, when we were starting to get email, his like, he would get so mad at the mailbox because it was just overflowing with junk. Do you remember that? um like every day he would go out and he would come like marching back in the house, like so mad that I put them on the do not send list, right? Like the, I don't want the junk mail.
00:05:57
Speaker
And I can remember these like glory days of email where we didn't have that. And it was like, oh, somebody sent me a message. Yay. And even my first professional role where I would go in and sit down at my desktop computer and read all what eight emails that I had and then go on and do my job.
00:06:22
Speaker
Yeah. And know there's just not like, that's just not the way it is anymore. Yeah. and And I do worry
Challenges of Email Clutter and AI's Impact
00:06:31
Speaker
about that, right? Like the noise yeah canceling out the signal. And yeah yeah I worry about that on all fronts right now with with generative AI and just with AI in general and its its ability to crank out stuff.
00:06:44
Speaker
Yes. um That as of right now, you know, really doesn't doesn't feel good. You know tell when you when you when you get that email that was that was written by Yeah.
00:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, we are pushing 400 billion emails being sent every single day. 400 billion emails being sent every day. And that is you for every person on the planet with the with an internet connection. Yeah.
00:07:17
Speaker
That's about 75 emails. Yeah. For every human being on the planet a day, day a day. um And yeah, that's noisy.
00:07:31
Speaker
yeah That's it's worse for professionals, right? That would be for, um you know, a youngster with an internet connection.
00:07:43
Speaker
Well, it's also interesting because, i mean, i you know, I met with a small team and we still have a lot of conversations about, okay, well, here's what I want. When you want to send me this kind of message, send me a text.
00:07:55
Speaker
like you know When it's about this, i prefer an email. When it's about this, send me a Slack. When it's about this posted in, you know, ClickUp or our project management software or whatever. And so i I do think there are multiple avenues now where there only used to be one for email.
00:08:11
Speaker
Yeah. um And I think SMS and text is is another sort of interesting one where there's more professional correspondence happening there than than there used to be.
00:08:23
Speaker
um But I think it's also just attempts to cut through the noise. um But then you do get to a point where you're like i don't even know where to look. I'm overwhelmed wherever I look. yeah And so that now you've got all the tools that come in and say, oh, well, we'll, we'll filter it for you.
00:08:37
Speaker
Yes. You've got your junk filters and your spam filters. And I um have for many years paid for a filtering platform called SaneBox.
00:08:49
Speaker
ah Okay. S-A-N-E, like make your mailbox sane again. Yeah. And it works pretty good, but also like, I don't have the time to kind of train it and,
00:09:01
Speaker
You know, and now we've got ai sort of um summarizing emails for us on our phones and on our computers. um So I just, a lot is changing right now with email. And I know you even mentioned in the book where you touched upon AI. you're like We're hesitant to even talk about it because it was 2023 when you were writing you knew how quickly it was going to change.
00:09:24
Speaker
And the summarization is something i I wanted to ask you about because that is kind of pushing against that like very handy um subject line that we used to rely on. Mm-hmm.
00:09:40
Speaker
Anyway, i mean, I don't want to jump into the middle of the thread. Yeah. No, let's jump into it because. not afraid of the robots. think the email space anyway. Yeah. i'm not afraid of the robot i think it' in the email space anyway but yeah um And I think they are here to help because billions and billions of emails, we can't possibly filter ourselves. And so they're trying. They're not doing it right yet, but they're trying.
Effective Email Communication Strategies
00:10:14
Speaker
And ah what we're really happy to hear is that the principles that are in the book are
00:10:20
Speaker
um which we, you know, we tell people you need to, you just need to tell people what's in the, your subject line just needs to be, what is this email about? Right. And so we've got to get away from the cute,
00:10:36
Speaker
subject line that, you know, and I'm breaking hearts of creative writers everywhere who spend all of this energy on crafting a really persuasive and enticing subject line or something with a question. And,
00:10:52
Speaker
And you're so right about the overwhelm. um When we ask people, you know, when you think about your inbox, what words come to mind? It's overwhelming. It's chaotic. And it's some kind of like exasperated, oh like, yuck.
00:11:08
Speaker
But it can be stressful, too, right? Because yeah bad news arrives via email. Yeah, yeah. it's It's the equivalent of your boss being like, hey, can we talk for a minute? Right.
00:11:18
Speaker
And if you are in your inbox feeling that way and the subject line is got a minute, right? Yeah. Got a minute for what? Tell me what you want from me. Just tell me. Don't try to trick me.
00:11:33
Speaker
Don't try to be cute about opening the email. And now maybe it will be the robots who, who force this. What these um filters are trying to do is they will open your email for you.
00:11:49
Speaker
They will read the content of it and they will see whether the content matches the subject line. yeah And if it does, good, green light. this looks like This looks like an email that's not trying to trick you. And so I do think Writers are going to have to move away from those old tactics and do more of what we're recommending in the book, which is tell them what's in the email right in that subject line and then use clear, simple language inside the email what's now once you get in there.
00:12:20
Speaker
ah So you also say in the book, which I agree with that, like personalization it's not just about, you know, including someone's first name. Yeah. or using the robots to be like, okay, they they said they liked sports. So let's make sure we include a sports story. Yeah. It's about having a personality.
00:12:41
Speaker
Yes. Right. and yeah And i I also think that human connection, um authentic, like real human connection is going to be even more sort of highlighted as like, Oh, that helps. over that So where do you weave in the personality? you know, all the creative writers, I think about handedly, you know, and yes, of course love reading, you know,
00:13:08
Speaker
what these people have to say about good writing, great writing. Yes. Yes. And the other thing you said, which did crush my soul. i mean, there are so many things in this book that I'm like, Oh, I do that. You know? Oh, I i do.
00:13:20
Speaker
I do start out with like, Oh, I hope, you know, the kids are good or hope you're doing well. And yes, hope you're hanging in there, whatever it is. And you're like, no, get get rid of that. Yes. I have. So for anybody who's watching the video version, I have the the t-shirt on today.
00:13:36
Speaker
that I hope this email finds you well t-shirt. um That's great. one of those we we yeah We need to get you one of these. so yes, I think the exciting thing for us was that we know that we can use email to build relationships.
00:13:56
Speaker
And oftentimes it's just used to drive people to take action. Right. um But we know you can build a relationship over email and that's such a powerful thing, but you're not going to do that with a drip campaign.
00:14:11
Speaker
You know, you're not going to do that with something that's fully um automated. You're going to do that by having injecting your own personality and personal touch into these things. And so we start in the book, just talking about how do you build trust with your audience and Yeah, I love that that. That was one of your your your quadrants or your triangle points. Yeah, the triangle, right. but The trust triangle is one of our favorite models because it's just so simple.
00:14:38
Speaker
yeah And we do we we say that first because, yes, there are some hacks in this book, right? Like we show you exactly where somebody's eyes are going to go. I love that. Open your email so that you can put your message where they can't help it but see it.
00:14:52
Speaker
And that's a beautiful hack. But they're not going to... act on anything or even get to the point where they're opening their email if they don't trust you. And so all of these points about, you know, the personality that you have and the humanness behind it, i i rely on that trust triangle when I'm trying to trying to understand, okay, what is the reader going to want from me?
00:15:15
Speaker
And the points on the triangle are authenticity, empathy, and logic. And i The triangle is not ours. um This is from Francis Fry and Anne Morris.
00:15:28
Speaker
um But these three points are also what Aristotle taught in rhetoric. It's ethos, pathos, and logos. So this is human behavior. yeah Yeah, this goes back to the to the real before times, right? When we're and or understanding human behavior.
00:15:45
Speaker
And what Francis Fry and Ann Morris would say is that you have to have all three. You can't just be authentic. um And what authentic authenticity and email means is that you yeah you have a voice, you have a personality. And in this more more and more robotic world, you're right, it needs to come through.
00:16:05
Speaker
um And it's about being honest. And I think for all of my marketing friends, we like, like we can get excited about anything, right? Like we can make anything seem exciting. But when you're meeting somebody, especially in your inbox, and you're in that overwhelming state, and you're just like, ah do you want to be hit with the like, I have the most exciting offer for you? No.
00:16:26
Speaker
Right? So it's like, we got to keep it real. We can't say things are exciting when they're not. We can't you know, to my higher ed friends, yeah we can't say apply now when the deadline is three months from now.
00:16:39
Speaker
Like, why now? I'm, you know, I'm checking my email on the toilet. Why do I need to do this now? Right? like This is the, this is what's really happening in real life. So the authenticity is all about keeping it real and having a voice.
00:16:53
Speaker
And the empathy is all about them. right? It's all about their where they're at trying to be helpful, trying to meet their needs. right um And, you know, a lot of times it's about introducing a lot more of a nurturing relationship into the email program than just the asking and asking and asking.
00:17:15
Speaker
And then the last piece, I think, you know, you could be in the most authentic organization, the most empathetic organization out there. But if your reader cannot follow your logic, you you know, you have lost them.
00:17:27
Speaker
So if they don't understand why they're getting your message, that any any chance that we can, any like hole that we can poke, right? Like any chance that you give us to delete, we're going to delete because we're just trying to get through this volume. So yeah, all of those things have to have all three.
00:17:45
Speaker
but if you do all three, then you're going to build like, that's where the relationship building comes. And then we can, we can try to combat this volume, which is billions of emails and the same point up same amount
The Trust Triangle in Email Writing
00:18:01
Speaker
of hours in the day. like we're not getting more hours in the day. So if the volume is going up, we don't have as much time to read and people aren't reading. And so, you know, when somebody says, well, people don't read your emails. I'm like, yeah, they don't, but they skim them or they'll glance at them. Yeah.
00:18:18
Speaker
A third of our readers are just glancing for two seconds. I loved the this. that I want to just pause right there because it's two seconds. Yeah. Ouch.
00:18:29
Speaker
And you say in the book, you know, write an email and then give it to a trusted friend or colleague and start your timer and just say, yeah i'm going to, I'm going to stop you at two seconds. Can you tell me what the point of this email was?
00:18:42
Speaker
Exactly. Right. And so You know, if you're a communication professional, your job is not to send emails. Your job is to get your message received.
00:18:54
Speaker
Right. That's the job. And if we know that a whole third of our audience is only spending two seconds, we've got like another chunk that's going to skim. You know, they're going to give us eight seconds.
00:19:08
Speaker
And then we've got another chunk that will actually sit there and read it. But even then, they're not dedicating a lot of time to reading. If you wanna reach everybody and get your message received, we have to be able to deliver the message in that two second glance.
00:19:21
Speaker
And that's where the fun part comes in That's where I think all my user experience friends will get excited to see how we've applied solid web UX research to email um with, you know, the eye tracking studies from our friends at Nielsen Norman group that go all the way back to early web days um where they discovered that how people read on a blank background, um a text on a blank background, your eyes are going to do this very predictable F pattern.
00:19:58
Speaker
And so, They're going to read your first line. They'll read that you hope this email finds you well. Yeah. They'll read that. They will. And then they're going to skip down to the next paragraph break.
00:20:10
Speaker
They're going to read that first line. Maybe not the whole thing. Maybe just the beginning of it. And then the eyes do this left-hand scan all the way down. And they, you know, they check this. They check this again later on mobile.
00:20:23
Speaker
Same thing. F patterns. A little bit more scrolling. Right to left reading language. Same thing. F is inverted. And it's just we are so predictable, right? So, um, so yeah, we can't use that first line as a throwaway and it's hard to, you know, it's hard to not be nice and open your email that way, but you can close with something nice.
00:20:46
Speaker
and loved i loved that. Yeah. um And I still, I still have a hard time even writing if I don't get it out of my system. So I write the, I write the nice thing and then I shove it all the way down. Yeah.
00:20:59
Speaker
And then I can get the rest of my thoughts out. But otherwise I'm stuck in the, I gotta be nice. um Well, then there's a reward. If you did, if you do scan and get all the way to the bottom, there's a nice reward. yeah heart You know, it's like, Oh yeah. She asked about the kids or whatever. Exactly. Exactly. I, so I really do think it's the combination of on like hacking that eye pattern, knowing where they're going to see it in a glance And then using really simple language to make sure that it's understood when people are reading so fast.
00:21:34
Speaker
And if you do that, you kind of build this momentum. And I think, again, the the empathy of it, right? Like thinking about a person who is like, i'm just trying to get through this email. They see your email and you're doing it right. Okay, I know what you want.
00:21:50
Speaker
I get it great, I'll do it and I'm done and I've checked something off and that feels good, right? If you have the momentum to understand and move something forward, now we're feeling good, right? And um I do want to harp on the simple language a bit because Especially in the the academic world that I'm in, like we pride ourselves in how verbose we can be, right?
00:22:15
Speaker
We pride ourselves in the big words that we use and like, you all of the grammar rules that we can follow. And it really doesn't work. um And we're hurting, we're, you know, we're losing people by using...
00:22:30
Speaker
um Language that, yes, of course, you know, ah they can understand it, but do they want to have to read at a postgraduate level in the email? No, they want to just be able to get through it and you feel better. And again, Nielsen Norman Group um has studied this seventh to ninth grade reading level, which is this close to spoken word, a conversational tone that we can get to.
00:22:55
Speaker
ah People will act faster. And it reduces doubts and hesitations and anxieties and all the things that we're feeling. And so, um you know, the tools that there's tools available out to but ah to all of us out there to make language simpler um Yeah, talk about that a little bit, because I think, you know, in theory, everyone's going to go, Oh, yeah, I should do that. But it's really ah right. If I tell you right at the seventh grade reading level, like, I don't know what that means.
00:23:25
Speaker
So um I would say it's, it's really close to spoken language. And if you can picture one person in your audience sitting across from you, and thinking about the message that you need to send, what would you say to them?
00:23:39
Speaker
And just say it out loud and write it down. and they you know, say, use that spoken word language. That's going to get you pretty close to that reading level. um ChatGPT is also pretty good at simplifying language.
00:23:54
Speaker
ah Don't tell it to write at a seventh grade reading level. We've tried that. It gives you something written for a toddler. But if you just say simplify this, it does a really good job at simplifying.
00:24:07
Speaker
um We love the Hemingway app. That's a free tool, Hemingway app.com, the Hemingway editor that will tell you what your reading level is. ah Grammarly does this too. They'll even give you suggestions.
00:24:21
Speaker
um But when we were, you know, we were, starting to write the book and we saw how chat GPT was writing emails. That was the thing that lit a fire because it was so bad at writing emails.
00:24:35
Speaker
This, and it would, you know, start with, we hope this email finds you well and all of the things that we knew weren't working.
Incorporating Book Principles into AI for Emails
00:24:42
Speaker
um So after we, after A public reminder, right. That chat GPT and a lot of these AI platforms are, are,
00:24:51
Speaker
designed off of everything that's been done already. Exactly. Yes. They're modeling after what they know. And so um after we published the book in August, the next task was to build a GPT.
00:25:06
Speaker
That was better um based off the book. So we pumped it with some... chapters of the book and we trained it and that's available for free on our website.
00:25:17
Speaker
Um, email book.co. You can find our resources in the GPT there. Awesome. Yeah. Um, ah there's so much good stuff there. the um, you know the idea of building trust, even if someone doesn't want to click on or engage with that particular thing that you're asking them to do,
00:25:39
Speaker
um if you haven't wasted a bunch of their time and God forbid, hoped the email found them well, and perhaps it hadn't, um you know, I think that it's like, okay, well I'll continue to open these emails because i wasn't assaulted as well as, you know, rights and insulted, um, and wasted time and had my time wasted or gotten confused right on top of not wanting to engage right now.
Managing Unsubscribe Rates and Engagement
00:26:05
Speaker
great You want to keep a lot of these audiences around and engaged, even though not every single email is going to require and action. And I love the other, um,
00:26:17
Speaker
point you mentioned about when it's giving day at Cornell, that you preemptively let people know, hey, that's coming. um There's going to be a lot of messaging coming out. Like if you want to just sort of be taken off the radar for that, let us know. And you, it's just, it's very thoughtful. It's very considerate. Yes. um I thought that was another great tip.
00:26:39
Speaker
We put, and this is, you know, for anybody who's concerned about their unsubscribe rate, We use this tactic on our team. We call it our self-aware unsubscribe because we are aware that we're a lot.
00:26:56
Speaker
We send a lot. Our volume is high. um And we know that that isn't good for everybody all of the time. So what we'll do is, and this is the tactic, it's in the same size font. Excuse me.
00:27:11
Speaker
Same, you know, same size font in the body of the email. It's not that six point tiny little. Oh, yeah. To the footer, right? It's right in the body of the email. It's typically a PS message, which we know gets read because it's different and it stands out.
00:27:28
Speaker
Yeah. And so we will use these PS messages to say. giving day, it says something like, hey, it's giving day, not your thing. That's OK. Yeah.
00:27:39
Speaker
unsubscribing is quick and easy and it'll, you know, it'll make your inbox a little bit clearer. Which is so nice, right? It's worded in a way that's not like, Oh, Hey, you know, don't have anything to give us. Um, or like, Hey, about to fly into a rage because you're still paying off your student loans and we're about to ask money.
00:27:59
Speaker
Um, or let it, my, one of my and I'm sure this is universal, right? When, when the, ah you just to go back to the unsubscribe option, which we're not talking about here with the PS and I love that.
00:28:12
Speaker
um But when, when the unsubscribe is hard for me, yeah I just want to, you know, break things. Right. um It's just yeah maddening.
00:28:25
Speaker
It is when I have to then go and tell you my yeah contact information again, or like, well, I don't know what email address you used. And I don't know, you know, those, yes, it is. It's like, that's when you get to the rage and subscribe moment. Right.
00:28:40
Speaker
But we have found with people that we work with who put these PS statements. um And I, I love to offer a pause instead of losing them forever. yeah And so on a newsletter, we're going to say do you want to pause until the end of June or the end of December?
00:29:00
Speaker
Let's put these on pause. um But, A lot of people actually don't interact with those. And just having those statements yeah in the communication has dropped unsubscribe rates for some of the teams that we're working with up to 75% just by having the statement there.
00:29:19
Speaker
Because people see that you know, like, oh, they self-aware, right? no Yes. Are you unable to support the university financially at this time? We understand Yeah. I think i can feel my, my pressure release valve.
00:29:37
Speaker
Exactly. Opening when I imagine reading something like that, especially with, if, if it's a organization or institution that I have a relationship with, sure I don't want to be driven to be so full of rage that I'm unsubscribing. i don't have to do that.
00:29:53
Speaker
Right. Um, So yeah, you know you're letting them know, hey, giving day coming up. um You want to pause? We get it? Not your thing? Okay. Let us know now before we annoy the heck out of you.
00:30:05
Speaker
Yeah, so right? come And we know that people who are more engaged with us, and we can talk about that. How do we get people more engaged? How can we get them wanting it, right?
00:30:16
Speaker
We know people that are more engaged with us have a higher tolerance for email pain, right? People who are closer to us. want to see what's going on. And so throughout the year, to get to the point where we have a really high volume, ask driven campaign, to get to the point where we're there, and we have people, um you know, our unsubscribe rate for giving days, like point zero four percent.
00:30:45
Speaker
It is people, they don't want to miss it because we've created this reputation that it's going to be fun and that we're going to use the same voice that we use. You know, we're the same team.
00:30:57
Speaker
We're the same group that you've been hearing from all year. But what they've been hearing from us all year is that we're here for you, that we're creating things for you.
00:31:08
Speaker
And I want my readers subconsciously when they see an email from the university to think, oh, there there's probably something good in there for me. And I want like, I'm going to open that. There's probably something I'm going to click on because we've created week after week these valuable offers to them. And sometimes it's just as simple as putting a smile on their face.
00:31:34
Speaker
you know If you can imagine going having to go through your emails and you know a sender every time is going to make you laugh, that's so that you want to keep, right?
00:31:45
Speaker
So again, like the ah the empathy and meeting people where they are and where they are in the inbox is not great. Yeah. yeah I have a million questions now ah to follow up with on that. Just a couple things you touched upon that I think are...
00:32:03
Speaker
are you know easier said than done yeah um and that I want to dig in on a little bit. So one, humor. yeah So you talk about offering value and and having personality and ah and a voice and tone um that's that's relatable, that feels human and authentic. Yeah.
00:32:24
Speaker
i don' I think that's really hard for institutions yeah to green light or to even understand that that's what they need versus this should sound like the institution, whatever that is. um And humor, it's not something I usually see listed as like that should be part of the tone. And obviously there's not, ah there are times when it that's the inappropriate tone. tend be Exactly. Right. but yeah But how did you get,
00:32:54
Speaker
How do we get there? How do you get there? Yeah. Yeah. So we started with just one campaign, right? So not taking a whole bite of the apple, but starting, let's see if there's one campaign that you can isolate and try this voice with and see how it resonates.
00:33:13
Speaker
And then when it does expand on that, and there are so and I think the personality can shift depending on the conversation, right?
00:33:26
Speaker
ah Just like you would if you were a human with a personality talking to somebody about an important topic versus like, I'm sending you a weekly newsletter. This is not serious.
00:33:37
Speaker
This is ah relationship I'm trying to build with you. And if I'm going to show up and talk with you every week, do you want that to be stodgy? Yeah. Yeah. No, you want it to have some life to it. And so i think that approach, having the flexibility of you can still be the same personality and in a more formal setting, in a more serious setting.
00:34:03
Speaker
um Your voice changes when you talk to your friends versus when you talk to somebody you don't know. hope. Yeah, we hope. Yeah. you um And so you can give yourself flexibility in those situations. I think my office, so I am Senior Director of Advancement Marketing for Cornell University.
00:34:22
Speaker
And so we serve the entire alumni base. And we're also doing this broad-based fundraising for the university. And so do can we have maybe a different voice um speaking to our alumni than perhaps the Government Affairs Office?
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we could have a different voice there. Yeah. um but um But, you know, giving ourselves permission to use emojis and giving ourselves permission to be very punny, right? Like that is part of our personality. We're witty and we're clever. Yeah.
00:35:00
Speaker
yeah But to, you know, to the listeners who are like, not at my institution, that would never fly. Right. I would say, like you can put some boundary statements around your voice, right? So we can be...
00:35:14
Speaker
We can be funny and not be, we can be informal even, but not sloppy. Yeah. Right. We're not going to be sloppy. we're going to be caring. We're not going to be uncaring. Right. So you can, you can kind of put these boundary statements around it when you're talking to your leadership about a new direction to say, we're not going to take it that far. What's too far. Right.
00:35:38
Speaker
um I think that's great. And I guess, you know, your suggestion to pick one campaign yeah where you can flex your voice towards something that's a little bit more personable. And I agree setting some boundaries and some guidelines for it and and some examples, right? To show leadership or to show yeah the larger community, hey, here's what we're going to test and then test it.
00:36:04
Speaker
Because you'll know whether it's working or not. And that's great data to go back to leadership with and say, look at this, ah you know, people responded really well to it. So let us, you know, expand this a little bit further where it makes sense.
00:36:20
Speaker
um And I also think that, You know, when we talk about, um again, you mentioned this in the book, give your readers something of value. Don't immediately jump to all of your asks.
00:36:31
Speaker
yeah I think you mentioned, like, do you need some suggestions for, like, what your parents can be doing while you're on a ah ah a tour of campus? um Just so many great, helpful things that...
00:36:45
Speaker
They make the receiver of the email not just feel good and, and, but look good. Right. You know, for having that information. And suddenly you've got a kid who's like, I'm going to look super thoughtful to my parents because I'm going to be like, Hey, why don't you guys go check out the blah, blah, you know? Exactly. Exactly. If you are, you know, if you,
00:37:09
Speaker
are trying to reach students who are, how many emails are these prospective students getting, right? How the heck are you going to stand out? If your institution is the one that's not just talking about themselves, but is going to help them through this process, regardless of whether you, they attend your institution or not, right?
00:37:31
Speaker
How are you going to get through your senior year of high school? And you know um, This one institution is they're helping you with your advanced classes. They're thinking about how to communicate with your parents about these issues.
00:37:45
Speaker
I don't know. Like, can they help you get a prom date? I don't know. But what are the things that are going on in their life? Yeah. And how do you insert yourself into that conversation? Because that's really where they're right they're stressed. How can you help them reduce the stress?
00:38:00
Speaker
Yeah. How can you how can you help them reduce anxiety in high school? um And if you're the one coming up with like breathing tips today, i might open that email. Yeah. um But instead, we talk about ourselves and our programs and apply now and apply now and look at our rankings. And like, who cares?
00:38:20
Speaker
Yeah, is I am worried about what's happening in my day. Yeah, it's it's really, so you know, I've been having so many conversations just about how we consume content, how we connect, how we create relationships. um And it's just something that I'm i'm always interested in And it's amazing to me that we tend, you know, that's why I guess empathy is on that triangle. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:38:48
Speaker
I used to joke that, you know, everyone's website was just a reflection of their internal organizational structure. Absolutely. And was talking with, um, a colleague who, uh, on an earlier podcast, actually, uh, Miles Kemp, who runs a design agency called variate and I would vary it.
00:39:09
Speaker
Uh, but anyway, He was talking about Conway's Law, which is and interesting theory that I'd never heard of before, which says like the way that you you communicate internally tends to be then the way that you communicate externally or something along those lines. But I'm still going to have to study up.
00:39:29
Speaker
um But a lot of this, I think, is... you know, a lot of email happens internal to groups and systems and it's not, it's not external.
00:39:40
Speaker
um And when there is a real dogmatic institutional way of speaking to each other, right. I think that's when you're in a situation where this is a really hard mountain to climb.
00:39:55
Speaker
um And I know you give some tips about building you know, the breaking through some of those barriers with stakeholders. But do you have any suggestions for someone who is listening to this, who knows they could be doing more with their email, um but is, is stuck in that kind of a scenario?
Improving Communication with Stakeholders
00:40:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:14
Speaker
Yeah, I think we always like to bring the evidence, right? So the book is packed with research that you can point to, yeah um to help have those conversations. um We love to bring the ugly worst case scenario, that's right? what What could possibly happen?
00:40:33
Speaker
What could possibly happen? um And sometimes there there is an ugly worst case scenario. so Sometimes it's like, well, what's the worst that could happen? Why don't we try this, right? Yeah. So um I think even seeing, on this is interesting. You talk about the internal um communication and how that's reflective as I've been training, um even amongst the Cornell community, seeing the internal emails change. Oh my goodness.
00:41:04
Speaker
It's so delightful to even how we talk to each other differently or how expectations of ah communication are and trying to pack every single little fit detail into a communication that we now know people won't retain and what does it mean to just kind of hit the highlights and um Yeah, there's there's um there is a lot in the way we communicate with each other where um it's this very like long form. I got to make sure i cover all my bases and everything is
00:41:47
Speaker
been vetted 19 times before I press send. um If we can kind of get ou ourselves, we got to simplify it I think really is is what it comes down to. Can we be comfortable with something, an approach that's much simpler than what yeah what we've built up?
00:42:04
Speaker
Well, I think that's, um ah again, the evidence and and going into these conversations backed up with the evidence is is great. Yeah. um And also what's the worst that can happen, especially if you're you're already batting kind of a zero, you know? Yeah. like, what, we take some more swings and still nobody engages?
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I want to just say something about deliverability too. um Because the email service providers are getting more sophisticated, right?
00:42:35
Speaker
Everybody's, the technology is getting more sophisticated. Yes, we are. If we keep sending bad emails, which I mean, we're thinking that they don't make sense. They're hard to unpack.
00:42:48
Speaker
And so people aren't engaging with them. We are going to have a harder and harder time even getting in the inbox. And i have found in this past year, 2024 when a lot of the tools became more sophisticated that ah partners that I work with on the consulting side, their emails weren't delivering at all and they didn't know it um because the robots were opening them, right? yeah And so they had opens.
00:43:20
Speaker
um But if the open rates are hovering around 20%, I want you to be worried because that is probably just robots opening.
00:43:32
Speaker
And so i have found institutions that, you know, they're they're saying email is dead or it doesn't work for us. And it's because they have put themselves in this reputational hole with the email service providers. um And so there is, I think it's ah it's time to relook at the program and to really reinvest in making sure that our lists are good, that we're we're doing the things that are going to help our emails deliver.
00:44:02
Speaker
um And if you're concerned about the responses that you're getting, it might not be that it might not be that the readers aren't reading. It might be actually that they're not even seeing it at all yeah Yeah. And I think that's only going to get more and more amplified. Exactly.
00:44:22
Speaker
You know, when I think about um any large institution and all of their multiple channels, they're trying to now communicate on, right? They've got their website, they've got their social media channels, they've got their professional channels, they've got the systems they know are, are, are sucking their information in and screen it back out to their audiences.
00:44:45
Speaker
You've got all these filters and and curatorial elements going on. And the lift it takes, the cost and time it takes to overhaul any one of these things is monumental. and and And it's daunting when you're also kind of at a time in in our evolution where it all needs to change very quickly.
Adapting to Evolving Communication Needs
00:45:08
Speaker
Um, and so we've got to blow up a lot of things I think, and let go of a lot of very static, um, outdated ways of doing things and tools that we've used and processes that we've relied on to to do those things because we just simply can't use those things and keep up with the chain, with the pace of change. Um,
00:45:31
Speaker
And to me, email is the perfect place to start because it's, it is not as expensive to overhaul your email.
00:45:42
Speaker
Um, you know, your, your content delivery team around that's focused on email than it is to like rebrand or, you know, yeah do a whole new website project where you're talking about so much time and money.
00:45:56
Speaker
If you're stuck doing it the old way, So for an institution that's like, we don't know where to start. Yeah. And we're saying start with email. just There's still a lot of people that are like, well well, we, you know, we got, we, we already bought this expensive program and we're locked into using it, you know, whatever it might be. And maybe you can talk through like in your experience, what, what are, what are good platforms? What are bad ones? Yeah.
00:46:22
Speaker
I think everyone's just like, oh my God, we got to get personalization going. We still haven't even gotten that going. And all these tools now, especially now with AI, are promising to do all of this stuff. like How do you cut through the noise and and actually make some progress here?
00:46:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So there are a couple templates, email templates that we have in the book. um They're also on the website. And remind everyone again what the website is? Emailbook.co.
00:46:50
Speaker
co And they're very lo-fi templates on purpose um because we, you know, yes, there's lots of shiny tools that you can you can use, um but these are built to be tool agnostic. So it doesn't matter if you have the fancy race car model or you're just writing your email in Microsoft Outlook.
00:47:15
Speaker
Truly doesn't matter because the principles are... um are can still be applied. And the what the the templates will show you um is where at a glance in that two second glance where the reader will read.
00:47:35
Speaker
Yes. and So you can leverage those spaces. Um, and there's a single call to action template that I think does that really well. The second template, um, we often refer to as our newsletter template. So if you have more than one thing to communicate, the piece there that I think, um,
00:47:56
Speaker
The value in it, I think, is, again, it's all coming back to simplicity, but what people will do when you have a newsletter or something that has multiple calls to action in it is if you break these things up by headings, people will just read your headings.
00:48:14
Speaker
And what it reminded me of when you were talking was, you know, if you're stuck in a newsletter template that is like campus news, right? organizational updates, right?
00:48:25
Speaker
Upcoming events. And those are the headings that that's what they'll see, but they don't really get any information out of them, right? So our template is just be really descriptive in those headings because they'll read them, right? And be really descriptive in your links.
00:48:43
Speaker
We're done with learn more. Yes. Learn more is done. And you can't swap it for read more. That's not allowed. Yeah. Just like Click Here was dead a decade ago. Okay, we're done with learn more too. We're done with read more. What are we learning more about? What are we reading more about? So there there are some really simple things if you're looking to reinvest in your email program.
00:49:07
Speaker
the action driven links and buttons, these more descriptive subject lines and um headings that you can use. And these tactics really, really, really work.
00:49:20
Speaker
um Again, none of the tricks are going to work if you don't have that trust built there. But with those two powers combined, you're going to see your, I know you're going to see the results.
00:49:33
Speaker
yeah Um, I think the other thing that's really interesting, you think about the, like the whole marketing ecosystem that you were saying, you know, you've got your website, you've got your social channels, like, where are you investing?
00:49:44
Speaker
The conversions are also happening in email. So not only is email cheaper, ah can be more reliable if you have a good email reputation. You were just basically reminding everyone to like get back to the basics and not worry about buying a whole new, you know, email deployment system and having all the bells and whistles.
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah. um I still think there are a lot of, you do talk about this in the book though. You need to have a strategy more than, more than ah a bunch of tools. You need to have a strategy. And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about how you set that up.
00:50:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so my strategy is very reader-centric. Maybe that's no surprise. um But what I like to do to make sure that we're getting to that place where we're serving and that we're not just asking all of the time is to put ourselves in that kind of quarterly cadence.
00:50:42
Speaker
And I have found that so many teams that struggle to keep up with email volume are on this constant hamster wheel of trying to ship something and get it out. Right. um And that if we can plan a quarter ahead of time, it's typically enough time to come up with some really creative ideas, find the right collaborators and get it together and shipped.
00:51:06
Speaker
So what we do and what um I've been teaching others to do is set up first, just a very low stakes quarterly brainstorm exercise. Right.
00:51:19
Speaker
for your email program, for what you want to communicate to your readers. And in that, time travel to the next quarter of life. And that's always a fun exercise, especially for me in the winter, because I can start thinking about spring.
00:51:34
Speaker
Right. And to ask yourself, what are people doing? What am I doing in the springtime? I'm going to be really excited to be outside. i am going to probably work on my garden. i maybe I'm going to do some spring cleaning. Like, what are these universal things that we do as humans in these different seasons?
00:51:56
Speaker
Right. And then we try to insert our organization into that story. So do by doing that, by starting to think about the people and what they're going to be doing, again, how they're feeling in their inbox, we're going to meet them with something that feels really relevant and also feels really personal to them. And so we can deliver something that feels personal without it being individualized personalization, you know,
00:52:25
Speaker
content that we might be thinking we need to deliver. But if you were to show up for me in April with a planner for my garden, um and you work at an institution that has a faculty member that could help with this, right? Now this feels so relevant to me.
00:52:43
Speaker
um So that I think is where our strategy work starts. It's what do the people need from us? How do we insert ourselves into their lives? And then how do we align the other messages with that? Right. So there are going to be things that we want to share that we want to hear and messages that we want to put out there.
00:53:04
Speaker
But if If it's about a give and take, right, we've got to be giving um and not asking all of the time. So I love doing that strategy work where it's about them first, how we insert ourselves into that conversation.
Ensuring Content Relevance for Readers
00:53:21
Speaker
um and then you you will naturally find some of these synergies between, you know, connect the dots between their lives and what your organization is trying to do.
00:53:32
Speaker
I love it. And such, such simple, basic things, but we tend to forget. um i think it's really hard if you're, you're like, ooh, next week is International Women's Day, what are we doing for it?
00:53:48
Speaker
right It's too hard to try to put that together in that kind of timeline. But if we were to give ourselves three months lead time, then we can start thinking about how does this make sense for us to be connected to that thing that's happening to that person.
00:54:06
Speaker
um And that's where you know you become a more reliable source. You become more relevant to your readers. Yeah. Yeah, and you give yourself and your team a little more breathing room to have some fun, right? Then it's like, all right, let's talk about April Fool's Day. Or let's talk about what are some fun things now that we can focus on Because we've got our bases covered. We've got a plan. We've got a strategy.
00:54:33
Speaker
We've got a tone. you simplified things down. we're not writing We're not burying things under news and events, headlines anymore, which is one of my personal...
00:54:44
Speaker
largest, biggest rages that I fly into is when people use those headlines. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I, you're guaranteeing that I'm not going to read this, that I have, I'm assuming that I do not care about yeah any, you what, what is underneath it that you want me to read.
00:55:03
Speaker
<unk> So thank you for, I have a big sticky on that page. That's just, yeah.
00:55:09
Speaker
um Well, Ashley, thank you so much for talking. And again, the book is called mailed it and it's so chock full of really great hacks, tips, advice, things to remember things, information to arm yourself with. If you're trying to make the case to um to make a difference here. Yes.
00:55:29
Speaker
And it really can make a difference and it does not require a lot of, of effort. um I think this is the place where, a lot can be accomplished.
00:55:39
Speaker
um And I think it's a place where a lot needs to be accomplished. So let's all use our email for good. And yeah, thanks for sharing all of this. And in such a great, enjoyable read as well. And well thank you for lifting it up. And yes, please, everybody go use the tools for good and not evil. um We've got a lot of work to do. We've got a lot of messages to communicate. And we want to make sure that those good messages cut through all the noise.
00:56:08
Speaker
Yeah, well, thanks for helping make sure that email um makes the world a better place. Awesome. So good talking to you. So good talking to you.