Read This If You're Getting Tons Of Useless Emails From Companies About Corona Virus
"The health of our employees is important to us . . ."
"Please, remember to wash your hands . . ."
"We're washing down all our keyboards and sending people home . . ."
Unless you are contributing some new information or notifying of some important procedural change that impacts customers in a big way, these emails are basically just spam.
That's the definition of spam, isn't it?
It's pretending to be ham.
But it's not.
So, it's spam.
Here's what I think is happening:
Someone at the office is saying "Jeeze, a lot of people are talking about this and I just got this email from Bob's Crab Shack telling me they're only serving pick-up orders. What do you think, Bill? I guess we'd better send something out to our list to let them know we are taking this seriously."
Doesn't that just inspire you?
The best email I've gotten so far has been from a financial advisor saying "don't make any moves!"
From a user perspective, getting a zillion emails is not a good thing. It means I have less time to distinguish the spam from the ham. I have less time to do useful things.
If the people who wrote the email thought of what the customer actually needs, I don't think 90% of these emails would be sent at all.
If anything, all this nonsense is an indication that the bar is low!
The bar is low for interesting, useful, and important messaging!
It's your time!
2 Minute Action:
Take one small, single thing you do today and just before you execute it, consider what your customer or end-user will actually think.
I guess another way to say all this is to "treat others the way you wish to be treated."
And the crazy part?
I bet it only takes 2 minutes or less to consider.