Have you ever tried to write an email and found yourself stressed about how to lay out your ideas?
It could be that the true problem is not laying out your ideas but choosing to include more than one idea in your email.
Today I read this piece in Jonathan Alger’s wonderful Making The Museum newsletter. In it, he explains why you should present one idea per surface, at most, when designing an exhibition.
Very wise.
And it’s the same with emails.
Particularly if you have a goal, an intended outcome, or an action you want the reader to take. (And if you don’t, then why would you be writing the email in the first place, right?)
And you might think, ‘What if it’s a digest?’ Fair enough. In that case, the ‘one idea’ is presenting a group of ideas. And the action you want your reader to take is to choose which they want to learn more about.
I’m sure you, like me, have received emails that contain more than one idea. Ones that ask too much of you. And I’m willing to bet that the only real ‘action’ you took was closing, archiving, or deleting that email. (As quickly as you possibly could.)
Because that kind of email is exhausting.
So if you want people to be glad to get emails from you. If you want them to do the things you’re asking. Limiting each email you write to one idea is a great way to make that happen.
It’s also the most effective way to sell things via email – but that’s an idea for another day (and email!).
Just one,
James
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