My inbox is exploding, stop sending so many email messages!

Too much email is the complaint I have heard often from both our parents and teachers, but the problem is that so many people have something to say. Today's technology allows us to click on a button and send an email, but does your school or organization really have a plan for who gets to send out communications and when they go out? Does anyone take the time to test what these email messages will look at?

Problem 1- too many colors

As a school with use Microsoft Outlook and there are many problems with the different versions, especially Outlook on the Macintosh. We go back and forth on some email messages and sometimes because screens aren't calibrated correctly we don't notice that words throughout the message are a dark blue and then the rest of the message is black. The end result is as an organization we look bad. 

Problem 2- graphic emails

We've moved into an age where we don't send as many flyers home in backpacks and want to be green. So instead the solution in the minds of most people is let's just embed what we would have sent as a flyer into our emails for our parents to look at. Has anyone taken a look at the analytics of your website or emails. Ours has proven that over 60% of the population is viewing the emails on a mobile device, with the majority being an Apple Operating System. And they aren't necessarily showing the images. So it means when they open the email, unless the subject lines is amazing they have no clue what your message is about. And they may have just received 15 other emails that day that really had no importance at all.

Problem 3-big, bold, beautiful, and exclamation marks!!!!

So the senders of the email don't always know what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. Not every single lines needs and exclamation mark because it's really not all important. Emails that have every other word bold are actually much harder to read then ones that break up paragraph around a subject. In general 4 or more colors is probably too many colors to use for fonts in an email that is not designed for that purpose. The simpler the email is, the easier it is to read.

These are just a few of the problems I have run into in the last couple weeks. What kinds of problems do you have with your emails?

Have you found a successful way to streamline communication to your parents so they aren't receiving an email for the child's teachers, the principals, the head of school, the parent's association, the athletics department, the communications department, the advancement department, and so on?