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There are few things more frustrating than talking with an uninformed parent even though you’ve tried to give them information over and over and over again.
It happened to me last week.
We’d been pushing a large event for the better part of a month, Sunday came around, and things went very well. Then on Monday, I got a call from a parent, upset because she didn’t know about it.
I bit my tongue (nearly all the way through), and listened to her, but I knew that I’d emailed her at least three times in the past month about it. Turns out she hadn’t read a single one of those emails. There are many reasons why your email communication might be ineffective. Here are just a few of them.
You Don’t Have a Current Email Address:
You’re Sending Emails At a Bad Time:
This is my thorn. I typically work at home in the evening after I put kids to bed. The problem here is that if I send an email at 10 p.m. to someone’s work address, they might not check email until the next morning when my message has come in along with three dozen other overnight messages. Use a scheduled send program like Outlook or Boomerang for Gmail to deliver emails at appropriate times.
Did I miss anything? What do you do to make sure your emails get read?
Aaron Helman is on a mission to help end the epidemic of youth worker burnout. He writes Smarter Youth Ministry to help youth workers with their biggest frustrations – things like effective communication. He is also the youth minister at Firehouse Youth Ministries in South Bend, Indiana.
