A Day Without Email Is Like …
Oct 11 2007
Found this article on the WSJ today. This strikes me as CRAZY. Companies putting “no email use rules in place on Fridays and the weekends”. This article is worth a read for all email marketers. I can tell you that I have some personal rules where I turn off my Blackberry when I pull in the garage at home each night and don’t turn it on until I get in the car in the AM. But I do check email at night after taking 3-4 hours uniterrupted with my kids and wife. My wife is actually worse than I am, and she does not work, but this iPhone I got her has her checking email all day long wherever she is. What would my clients think as an email marketer and an interactive ad agency if I just shut down?
What would you think if all companies just stopped using email on Fridays. Would this affect your b to b campaigns? Your overall marketing efforts? Would you roll out some heavy Friday DM or even mobile advertising (and I mean rolling vans with sign boards or projectors here not phones)?
From the WSJ:
When U.S. Cellular’s chief operating officer, Jay Ellison, imposed a “no email Friday” rule at his company, he thought it would ease workers’ overload.
Instead, he got a rebellion. Among many irate responses, Kathy Volpi, a marketing director, confronted Mr. Ellison and “just ripped me,” he says. “She really gave me a piece of her mind.”
Ms. Volpi says that at the time the ban seemed like a needless obstacle. “I thought, ‘He just doesn’t understand how much work we have to get done, and how much easier’ ” it is when using email.
A growing number of employers, including U.S. Cellular, Deloitte & Touche and Intel, are imposing or trying out “no email” Fridays or weekends. While the bans typically allow emailing clients and customers or responding to urgent matters, the normal flow of routine internal email is halted. Violators are hit with token fines, or just called out by the boss.
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October 11th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I read this article this morning too. I’m kind of impressed, as I can see a lot of work flow speeding up internally if folks used old fashioned methods of conversation - checking in with people, stopping by cubes, setting up meetings. But then again, I can see this as a nice social experiment that can be effective without being every Friday! I notice personally, on vacations, I get much less compulsive about email. I have various email accounts for various purposes, which helps manage the compulsions.
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It is an addiction or at least we are all conditioned to be ALWAYS ON, but if we start going Always off (not like I think this is going to happen) then will we go back to carrier pigeon? I like to cry like the sky is falling, but it is not, these are just things that HR teams try and old school CEOs try that still have their secretaries print out theri email for them (My uncle was Chairman of Disney Consumer Products and he never logged into email). Actually 5-6 years after this retirement we got him set up on email. And he still rarely checks it.