The Great Banana Bread Experiment: Are People Really Reading Your Emails?

A couple of weeks ago, I sent out an important message to my entire staff about IT support. We had recently put in some technologies to make it easier for staff to request IT support during business and non-business hours, and some of our procedures had changed. The subject line began with PLEASE READ, and it came directly from me, Joanna Pineda, CEO and the person who signs everyone’s paycheck.

The email was longish so I decided to do a test. At the very bottom of the email, I wrote:

“BTW, if you read all the way down to this message, send me an email with the words “banana bread” in the subject line. I’ll bring in banana bread for you next week and for God’s sake, don’t give this away on Slack or any other method. Curious to see how many people will read this message. Cheers.”

So how many people sent me a banana bread email? Out of 40 people, seven people sent me emails. Seven – that’s it!

To be fair, the IT team already knew the procedures. And I had discussed the procedures with a few staff before sending the emails.

During staff meeting last week, I asked everyone if they had: read but not responded, skimmed and not read my banana bread message, or if they didn’t read the message at all. I gave everyone amnesty if they told me the truth. I got these responses:

• I already know the policies
• I skimmed the part about the policies to make sure I knew what I needed to know
• Too long, didn’t read
• I don’t like banana bread
• I didn’t see the email

I conducted a similar experiment a couple of months back when I sent an email to my son’s Cub Scout pack, of which I’m the committee chair. The email contained information about the next pack meeting, an upcoming camping trip… Yada, yada – if you’re a Scout parent, you understand me. At the bottom, I said:

“Okay, thanks for reading this far. If you got this far, email me and put the word “magnet” in the subject line and I’ll give you a Friends of Scouting magnet at the next meeting.”

Out of 60 people on the list, three responded. Two said they’d take a magnet and one said, “Magnet – but I don’t need a magnet. What fun!”

I know this wasn’t a scientific test, and the emails weren’t life or death, but I think these experiments are pretty illustrative of what really happens when we send out emails. We look at our open and click rates and pray that those who opened actually read the message. Are they actually reading your message in its entirety? God, most likely not.

What are the takeaways here? For starters:

• Keep your emails short(er)
• Don’t bury important calls to action at the bottom of your message
• Test your campaigns

If you’ve read all the way to the bottom of this blog post, submit a comment on this post using the word SWAG, and I’ll send a Matrix Group pen to the first 25 people. And if you decide to bury an Easter Egg in your next email newsletter, please write the results of your experiment in the comments as well or send me an email.