TikTokify your email. Yeah, it's a thing.

👉 and it might well help you...a lot

Ever watched a kid scrolling TikTok? Frightening.

Mine are in their 20s and live at different ends of the country. But every so often they’ll visit and I’ll catch them mindlessly flicking through video after video before finally settling on one they’ll watch for a full 20 seconds.

Not like us grown-ups at all.

When we’re going through emails we’ll carefully read each one from top to bottom because they contain valuable information. Then we’ll file them away systematically so we can come back to them when we need to.

Oh wait, sorry. I drifted off into email marketing fantasyland there.

Correction: we’re exactly like our kids.

We’re forced to read emails from bosses, colleagues and customers. But the rest of the stuff that pours into our inbox?

Flick, flick, scan, flick, scan, flick.

Valuable information? Yeah, I’ll come back to it. (No, I won’t. I’ll vaguely remember it when I need it and scour my inbox but fail to find it).

Useful insights? How to guides? Lovely. Just haven’t got the time right now.

But funnily enough, I did manage to find the time to read an entire email called “I'm the Han Solo of Burbank airport runs” that opened up with a gif of Bruce Willis shouting “Welcome to the Party Pal”.

Sometimes I feel a bit inadequate hearing people on Twitter or Linkedin talk about how focused they are. How they’re learning all the time. How they study all the emails they’ve signed up for not just for what they say but how they say it.

Then I speak to my real friends in the real world and I realise that I’m completely normal. It’s those superproductives who are weird.

And I suspect your clients and your email readers are more like my friends too.

Normal people who get bored easily. People who need something to stand out in their inbox before they’ll open it. Who need to be grabbed by the first few paragraphs before they’ll read it. Who’ll quit and scroll on if it’s too dull.

If there’s one hugely underrated skill in the world of marketing - and writing emails in particular - I’d say it’s the ability to be entertaining.

Not necessarily laugh-a-minute stand-up comedy entertaining. Not gripping drama. Not tear-jerking or joy-bringing. Though that would be nice.

Just not boring.

I can’t, in all honesty, say I’ve cracked it. Making complex information or useful tips more entertaining is hard.

But I do know that the email writers who think about it and pay attention to it - even if not perfectly - get their emails read a lot more than those who think creating valuable content is enough.

Agree?

Think about the last emails you read from beginning to end (that you didn’t have to). What was it that kept you gripped?

Could you add a little bit of the same secret sauce to your emails?

My guess is you could.

And next time I’ll share some of the ways I’ve found that help.

- Ian