We asked our team of experts here at Tunheim for their top tips for utilizing communications as organizations navigate change. Here’s what they said:

Do you open every email you receive? Of course you don’t.

You prioritize those you open and you ignore or delete many of the others. Why do you chose to open one email while deleting another? Here are a few email subject line best practices to consider.

The two most important factors that determine whether someone will open an email are:

1. Is the sender of the email known to me?
2. Does the subject line inform me that there is something of interest in the email?

People scan their inboxes just as they scan anything else online. They start by seeing who an email is from and then scan the subject line to determine if there is something in the email that will compel them to open to learn more.

The Sender

You’ll want to consider that dynamic when crafting your email subject lines in order to prompt recipients to dig in and read your message.

• If you are sending an email personally, does your recipient know you?
• If you are sending as an organization, are your recipients familiar with your brand?

If you answered yes, then you’ve successfully jumped the first hurdle.

The Subject Line

What’s in it for your recipients?

What is compelling or valuable enough about your email to your recipients that will prompt them to open it? The only purpose of the subject line is to motivate your recipients to open.

It’s a teaser. Don’t waste it by, for example, using it to brand your newsletter and tell subscribers what issue number it is. Your subscribers know the email is a newsletter because they subscribed to receive it. They don’t need to know the issue number. What they need to know is what’s inside!

Key Messages

There are instances where it will be more important to ensure your key messages have been seen than to necessarily get people to open your email.

While you should think about weaving your primary key message into your subject lines, when responding to a crisis or using email for change communications, you’ll want to lead with your key messages.

The importance of leading with your key message in the subject line becomes even more clear when you consider that even those people who did not open the email will have seen your key message simply by virtue of scanning their inbox.

Avoid language that contradicts your key message in favor of language that supports it.

For example, an apartment complex undergoing renovations are going to at best inconvenience residents and at worst anger them with the disruption to their lives. Email updates about the renovations should:

• Not call it a “construction update”
• But frame it as a “progress update” instead.

For those who open your email, start the body of your email with key messaging. Think about using a a call-out number or statistic to grab the attention of the reader followed by a brief blurb that explains or adds context to that figure by way of illustrating or supporting your key message.

Put bad news in a positive frame.

Continuing with the idea of construction, rather than talking solely about interruptions, frame that disruption with messages about progress to date and highlight the benefits and vision of the future when the renovation is complete.

Consider bolding key messages to harness scanning behavior and include future-focused imagery that reinforces the positive vision of the future rather than reinforcing the disruption and inconvenience of the present.

Need help with your email marketing program? Let’s talk.

I was intrigued with a headline in the New York Times Sunday edition last weekend: “Snap out of it, America” was the cover of a special opinion section. The premise of the section was that as a nation we’ve lost our capacity to think boldly.  And it was full of interesting ideas and focused on areas that would benefit from a renewed focus on innovation. I appreciated the read – but it left me wondering more about the ‘why’ of our fading energy for thinking big. And what it will take for us to collectively regain our mojo.

To be clear, there have always been lots of us with low tolerance for risk – and that is what innovation is all about: letting go of the status quo to try something new. Most of us go to school, get decent jobs, live our lives. ‘Risks’ are things like taking out a mortgage on a first home or taking on student loans. It has always been a minority of us with the confidence to ‘bet the farm’ or max-out on credit cards to pursue a dream. Even in our national political leadership, there have been leaders who encouraged high aspirations (John F. Kennedy’s pledge to get to the moon comes to mind), while there were others that implored us to lower our sights (Trump’s America First must be viewed as a version of this). So we can speculate that maybe we are just at that point in the continuing cycles of life: our mojo will come back around on its own. But maybe not.

As a business owner and someone entering the later phase of my career, I have been reflecting on the topic of risk a lot lately: risk appetite, risk tolerance, risk management. And I think a big part of what is happening in our collective, national psyche is vertigo caused by inability to assess risks as well as we have in the past – primarily because the pace of change has accelerated. Add to that the fact that, as a society, we have so much to lose relative to the lives our forefathers and mothers were living just a couple generations ago. And a sad, final contributing factor I would observe: the dynamics pulling us out of a strong sense of American esprit de corps and into tribal identities: there are so few ‘win/win’ propositions – only win/lose scenarios. And so whether one is calculating in dollars, in influence, in reputation, avoiding risk becomes the rational choice – who wants to be a loser?

What is giving me some surprising optimism is the reported ‘Great Resignation.’ Not because I am unimpacted by the phenomenon of talented people deciding they want to leave organizations like mine and strike out of their own (it has been a particular challenge in the professional services and creative services world for years now!). But I am encouraged because it has to be interpreted as either a repudiation of how organizational life is valued OR a sign that people’s tolerance for risk is on the rise. Or a combination of both. A perfect set-up for innovations: in what work life looks like; in how people balance careers and family; in what people value and what they are willing to trade for what they value.

Said another way: in my experience, innovation is most potent when there are imbalances that motivate us to seek some kinds of correction. The expanding disparities of the past thirty years – the collapse of the middle class, the uneven recovery from the Great Recession, the inequitable experiences during the pandemic are all contributing to imbalances that cannot be ignored. We can and should innovate our way out of these troubled times. My bet is that we will look back decades from now and recognize some valuable signs of progress toward equity. But the process will likely be painful for some (those with the most to lose); an adventure for some (those with the highest risk tolerance); scary for some (those with the lowest risk tolerance).

My advice: for most of us, it will be important to focus reflection on the risks of NOT innovating, as opposed to our inclination to see change as a risk to avoid. Lean in…

Full disclosure: I have had ‘a job’ without a break for over 47 years – since I turned 18 years old. Not the same job, of course:  I’ve moved from private to public sector and back again. Always in an office, though they ranged from a cubicle in a suburban office park, to prime real estate just off mahogany row in a corporate headquarters, to ornate space in a public building surrounded by pomp and circumstance. I share all that just to put my following observations into context.

My career and family life followed what I know has been the norm for so many: I worked first to help pay for post-secondary education, then invested in a home and ensured that I have had continuous employment ever since to pay the mortgage(s). Along the way, we proceeded in our careers to also enjoy wonderful vacations and the periodic splurge on amenities like a swimming pool or another home improvement. Nothing too crazy: what I understand to be a pretty typical path for those of us born into enough privilege to access a college education and upwardly mobile career opportunities.

Now popular media is filled with stories of the choices people are making to step away or out of that ‘career ladder’ notion of worklife. Sometimes it is about the challenges of balancing work and family, especially for women. Sometimes it is about coming to terms with recognition that the work isn’t being valued enough to justify continued commitment. And sometimes it is about acknowledgement that work can’t only be about money. Striving for purpose may be a driving reason for stepping away. The anguish of loss suffered through the pandemic has certainly awakened people’s awareness that life can be short, and perhaps not worth toiling at work that one hates, or at least finds unfulfilling. There are likely as many specific rationales as there are people making the decision to step away from a job.

But at a macro level, I think we are just starting to contemplate what is going on, and where it might lead. Beyond those personal choices being made by millions of people is the reality that the relationship between work and wealth has been breaking down for a couple generations and deteriorating more quickly in just the past generation. Most recent data show that in the United States, the ‘middle class’ has lost ground whether measuring by income or by assets. Collectively, the middle 60 percent – more than 77 million households – own about the same value of assets as the one percent of households that have the highest incomes – just over one million households. Translated: most people are working hard, but owning less of the real estate, the private businesses or the stock portfolios that have historically created generational wealth.

Meanwhile, we’ve watched new forms of wealth creation emerge. Private equity dollars lift up thousands of start-ups, and though only a small fraction are ultimately successful, they offer an inspiring potential path to both wealth and freedom from ‘a job.’ Influencers on social media are another phenomenon: accumulating income by creatively sharing your likes has not only invented a new career category – it has effectively turned the traditional worlds of advertising, marketing and public relations upside down. Being famous is now a career choice, rather than the consequence of being exceptional at some other professional pursuit. Remarkable.

These trends won’t undermine much of our economy overnight: large employers, in particular, still have tools to incentivize talented people to climb their ladders. But underestimating either the cultural evolution or the economic shifts underway in our collective relationship to work would be a serious mistake for any organizational leader. I often quote Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to emphasize the point: “The pace of change has never been this fast; but it will never be this slow again.”