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Writer's pictureRadhika Bhalla

If you don't read Emails..

Updated: Jun 13

How many times have you heard this – “Hey! I received your email. Thanks. Can you take me through it over the phone?” OR “Hey! I saw your email. Can you just WhatsApp me the image of the project plan?”


I hear it every day. Very few of my clients read emails or even open the attachments. I find myself reading emails to them, walking them through the material and very often, just Whatsapping images or key points. (I have even sent the email images via Whatsapp!)

In today's age of information overload, it seems our brain registers only what the eye can scan in 5-10 seconds. Anything above that and we lose attention. There is a barrage of emails each day. Most people report that only 40% of the emails they receive are useful. In scanning through the emails, several important ones get missed. The most important are the ones from bosses & other power centers - those that have political angles to them and those that contain a matter of life and death urgency.


In our world, a lot can be made short/graphic but there are several key messages that need text that is at least 100 words long. How do you ensure your employees, clients, partners read that text? (and not everything can be made into an infographic/image)

Is it not a dichotomy that while the need to digitize customers and employee interfaces is known, there is also a need to be spoken to? (“Hey! I saw your email but can you take me through it over the phone?”)


Is it not a dichotomy when we say, “You should express yourself and your emotions”, but when we don’t want to go over the narratives? When we simply deduce the emotion through an emoji?


Are we not missing the context and the narrative when we replace preambles with infographics?


Should the story not excite us as much as an infographic?




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