Regardless of your position within the company, emails are a big part of corporate life. On one hand, it makes communication easier, but on the other, too many emails a day can become overwhelming. This is email fatigue, and it has two main forms.
Receiving too many emails
The stress of knowing how many unread messages are waiting in your inbox is a huge part of email fatigue. In your mind, they’re all incomplete tasks that you haven’t gotten to. Even when you’re working on something important, those unanswered emails nag at you. Their presence takes up room in your head and stays there, rent-free. To many, these loose ends remain open, slowly gnawing away at us during our free time.
This can quickly lead to burnout, as well as serious anxiety issues. In today’s world of instant communication, people often expect a reply ASAP. This is a totally unrealistic expectation for several reasons. No one is, nor should they be, available 24/7. But the pressure of several hundred emails waiting for a response makes us feel like we should be. In a survey organized by Wakefield Research, over 38% of its respondents stated that email fatigue increases their chances of quitting.
The Solution: There is a growing trend for employment laws in businesses that give workers “the right to disconnect.” This allows people to ignore work emails until they’re on the clock, and limit contacting employees when they’re not working.
Even if it’s not a law, this is something you can do for yourself. It’ll be a step towards disconnecting.
Sending too many emails
It’s easy to exhaust your email list by sending too many, too quickly. In your haste to keep business at the forefront of your contacts’ minds, you’re likely to run out of contacts a lot faster. Then it’s back to the drawing board of data mining and email lines, only to repeat the overzealous process over again.
High email output is exhausting for both you and your contacts. Constant emails are more likely to earn an unsubscription than to encourage consumers to accept your messages. If the content is irrelevant to them, and bombarding their inbox every day, they’re not going to stay on your mailing list very long.
If your emails end up being marked as spam, any campaign you were running is going to spiral.
Solution: Exploring your audience is a good place to start. If you target a specific business demographic, make sure your emails contain content relevant to them. Keep an eye on your metrics when you send out something to check for audience engagement.
List segmentation is also a great way to combat fatiguing your recipients. As we’ve already said, the more targeted and relevant, the better response you’re likely to get. Segmenting your lists will make your email drafting and reply process more effective. We want to ensure that any original content matches the correct target audience.
Figuring out the best time and frequency to send emails will help ensure higher engagement and fewer unsubscriptions. According to Wordstream, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days for sending out email newsletters. But like all things, your mileage may vary! Test your contacts and compare the results by sending out your emails at different times, and then stick to the one that works best.
These are the basics of email fatigue and how to combat it. Now, you can keep your contacts happy while getting your message out there! Don’t stress, do your best!
