Is your attention span less than a goldfish?

My emails aren’t getting opened… much less read!

This is an all too common issue for anyone trying to promote and sell via email marketing. People just aren’t responding to email marketing the way they once did.

There are many reasons for the lackluster results…

• People are on overload with the amount of information vying for their attention.
• There are many more distractions than in the past.
• People’s brains have literally been rewired due to technology.
• Email deliverability is much less reliable than in the past.

Here are a few questions to consider specific to email deliverability…

• Is the email address correct?
• Has your recipient’s email address changed?
• Is the recipient’s mailbox full or has their account been disabled?
• Does the recipient have a SPAM blocker that prevents virtually any message sent in bulk to be blocked?
• Is your messaging engaging?

In addition to the common reasons related to email distribution there is also the issue of attention span.

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, The Associated Press, the average attention span for adults online is 9.5 seconds. That’s literally less than goldfish.

If you’re feeling like people are not paying attention to what you are sending out, writing, saying or shooting on video, they probably aren’t.

The shocking truth is that people’s brains have literally been rewired due to technology.

On any given day we tweet, we post on our Facebook wall, we watch dozens of videos, we read dozens, even hundreds, of emails and we spend hours researching on the Internet.

All of this is impacting how our brains function. Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brain, writes that our attention is seized by the Internet only to be scrambled by it.

According to an article in the Huffington Post; MRI research has shown that the brains of Internet users who have trouble controlling their craving to be constantly plugged-in exhibit changes similar to those seen in people addicted to drugs and alcohol.

When most people try to unplug for even a day, they tend to experience withdrawl symptoms similar to alcoholics and drug addicts.

This is frightening information and yet, information we can benefit from knowing. Here’s why…

If you continue to send information out as you did in the past, you are likely noticing a huge drop in open rates. Today, more than ever, you have to immediately grab people’s attention.

As you prepare your emails think through your subject line. Is it one that will spark the curiosity of the recipient? Is it engaging? Does it indicate the full message will solve a specific problem?

Once people open the message does it immediately grab the reader’s attention?

Not only have online attention spans dropped to mere seconds, the attention span during live, in-person presentations have dramatically dropped in the last couple of decades to less than ten minutes. This requires that speakers and presenters have pattern interrupts every few minutes if they want to keep their audience members fully engaged.

This would include audience participation, mini breaks, incorporating visuals into your presentation and demonstrations that require attendees use different parts of their brain. Moving from critical thinking to creative thinking can keep people’s attention.

Acknowledging the dramatic drop on how long someone pays attention to whatever we are doing is essential to addressing the issue. To pretend this issue doesn’t exists will put your messaging in the category of Dinosaurs…extinct.