I don’t want to get into the e-mail nerdery on this, but unanswered
questions are torture, at least for me. So, here’s why in the next paragraph. Feel
free to skip, even though we’re getting pretty meta (note: Not Meta) to do that.
More later.
There are many possible reasons why an email will junk, from
inbox levels to subscriber use to throttling and bounce rates. The bigger
problem is that diagnostics at individual levels are far from exact, because ISPs
want to keep this kind of thing secret from would-be spammers. If it’s 100%
clear why something junks, that junk filtration method is nearly immediately
worthless. So, there is almost no way to definitively know the reason an email
junks, and it may even be more than one reason. Moving on.
The bigger point for me was that we had been here before. We
had also taken steps to help everyone avoid this, by putting the sender on a “whitelist”
and changing their settings at the inbox level. Individual users can prevent
junking, and the directions weren’t even particularly hard.
They had also been publicized. For about three months, every
email we had sent out went out with a PS, and there was even a dedicated email
for just this subject on its own. The person who reported the junking has been
at the client’s employ during all of this.
So, the most likely scenario is that user never took the
steps to prevent the junking. It’s possible, of course, that there was a
breakthrough case, and there is nothing gained from impugning the motive of a
client. But the overall performance of the email in question was in line with
recent flights, so the chance of some seismic act to cause junking seems minimal.
What seems most likely is that the user simply did not read
that email, or the other emails. Because TL/DR. Which may be even more endemic
than Covid right now, and hopefully, not just when I write something to someone.
I totally get why. Jobs are always on, emails and meetings
are never ending, and many employers are cutting corners while having a tough
time filling positions (there may be a clue here). Sweating the details has never
been harder. I’ve started sprinkling text messages with non sequiturs on
personal channels, just as a periodic check to see if people are reading. It’s
good intel because it tells you who you will need to follow up with offline. (Also,
fish ride bicycles because meta not Meta references are impossible to resist.)
As with every crisis, there is good news to this. Sweating
the details has always been a competitive advantage. It is also now becoming increasingly
lucrative.
Another client (a more lucrative one, by the way – there may
be a clue here) has brought us on for a variety of tasks. Among them is combing
through their data to find insights, not just from tests, but usage.
This is not work that is usually in our wheelhouse, or
something we have as much experience in doing. Career analytic professionals in
our past might scoff at our jerry-rigged confidence level calculations, or
raise valid objections that, well, often activate our own urge to TL/DR. We are
copy writers and creative professionals who are not scared of math, not
mathematicians with a creative edge.
But that is not what this client is paying for.
So, if you can lean into it, embrace the details and read
all the way through, without getting distracted in our pandemic of distraction?
You might just add value. A lot of it. For you, and your
client.
From something that it seems like anyone could do, but won’t.
