Craft Business Q + A Session: Answering Emails

 

Question:  What is the deal with people not answering their emails?
Answer:  This is a great question and one that I often ponder myself.  Here are my thoughts on the subject.

1. There is snobbery in the world and plenty of it. Perhaps some people feel like their blog is huge, their work is huge and they're huge, so why should they respond to a random someone.
2. Some folks perhaps don't think that the emailer is important enough to receive a return email.
3. Some folks receive emails by the truckload and can't keep up and perhaps feel people will forgive the action of not responding.
4. Some people are just plain busy. On the other hand, is this a good excuse because guess what?EVERYBODY is busy these days!
5. Some people don't get truckloads of email per day and still don't answer the ones they do get.
6. Some people feel overwhelmed by emails and don't quite know how to get a handle on it.
7. Some folks couldn't really give a crud about answering emails. Perhaps they don't give it any real importance.

Additional Comments:

1. Is not responding to one's emails good business practice or poor business? You be the judge. I mean, we are in business. If someone sends an email and you don't answer it, it may feel like a middle finger to the sender. It says that you don't care enough about them to respond to an email that they took time out of their day to think of, draft up, edit and send. Is this professional, ethical and polite way to conduct your business?
2. It speaks volumes about an individual and the business they are running to those on the receiving end.
3. People talk AND they remember. If you don't respond to someone today because you don't feel they're important, will you respond to them tomorrow if you see them on the Oprah show? Again, is that professional, ethical and good business practice? If it is your practice to not respond to emails or respond to select emails, who knows what you may have lost as a result of the rebuffed email. It could have cost you in sales and/or opportunities from that one individual (who sent the email). It could have cost many more sales and/or opportunities from word of mouth advertising/references that the email sender would have told to their family, friends, social media circle. Do we always know how we may be doing harm to our own businesses.