Want to be ignored? Put it in an attachment.

Being a business planner is sometimes a lot like working in advertising - planners are fighting for a program manager's attention. Fighting with HR issues, finance reports, client issues...and, oh yeah, delivery of their program.

So here's a great tip to get completely ignored on your next e-mail call letter: Put all of your important information in an attachment!

This morning I saw an email go out to senior managers asking for quarterly reporting, and it contained no less than 14 separate attachments. The best part, of course, being that our internal information management system gives only a numbered reference, so you can't even preview the documents by looking at their title.

How many managers do you think will open all those attachments? Or even read through the email, given the wall of attachments staring at them from across the bottom of the window?

When sending out a call letter, I like to try and keep it as simple as possible.

- Keep your intro short and to the point. Make sure you state what the objective of this call is / who the audience is / why it's being done.
- Make all of your important points in bullets. People don't read blocks of instructions. It's much easier for a program manager to follow a couple of bullet points on what they are expected to do.
- Only attach the necessary documents. If there are other documents that might be useful to people, send another e-mail with the various "reference" documents for them. Or make an offer in the email to follow-up with them and provide further information.

Now I'm off to tie up the printer, figuring out the 14 attachments and how they interact.

Get a better idea on how to write emails in this book.

Or for a more academic perspective, check out this link:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/newsletters.html