We can send a message across the world almost instantly.
Text, email, social, digital, mail, calls. Campaigns and organizations use these channels to find people, segment audiences, and put messages in front of them.
The harder part is getting someone to actually care about what they receive.
I don’t think people have stopped paying attention. I think we’re selective about what deserves our attention. Think about your own phone. How many texts do you delete after reading the first few words? How many emails sit unopened? How many ads do you scroll past without even registering who they were from?
I do it constantly. I can tell almost immediately when I’m just another person on a list. Putting my name in the first sentence doesn’t really change that.
If someone is constantly emailing or texting me with “urgent” messages, I start tuning them out. If everything is important, nothing really is.
What usually gets me to stop is something specifically relevant to me: good timing, a mutual connection, something related to my work or personal life, or evidence that the person understands why they’re reaching out. My reaction is, “OK, this person knows why they’re talking to me.”
So maybe the opportunity isn’t simply finding another way to reach someone. Maybe it’s getting better at what we say, who we say it to, when we say it, and how we deliver it. Getting someone to notice is only the beginning. What gives them a reason to respond or act?
Efficiency isn’t the objective
There is nothing wrong with scale or automation. They’re powerful tools. The problem starts when efficiency becomes the objective instead of the tool.
Imagine Jan. 1 rolls around and I decide I’m going to be incredibly efficient this year. I send every friend and family member a message that says, “Happy birthday this year!”
Done. Everyone reached. Nobody forgotten. I’ve checked the box for the entire year.
It would also be a terrible way to communicate.
The point of wishing someone a happy birthday isn’t to complete the task. It’s to let that person know I’m thinking about them. A generic message sent to everyone on Jan. 1 accomplishes the exact opposite. It makes something that should feel personal feel completely impersonal.
Now use the same technology differently. Know when everyone’s birthday is. Associate their name with the right message. Personalize it based on the relationship. Schedule it for the right day. Automate the entire thing behind the scenes if you want.
But simply automating “Happy birthday, Patrick!” every year isn’t much better. Eventually I’m going to know exactly what it is. What makes it meaningful is a joke, something we did together, asking about the family, or just writing it the way that person actually talks to me.
To me, using my name isn’t personalization. Making the message feel like it was actually intended for me is.
Suddenly, technology is doing more work, but the communication feels more human, not less.
And, hopefully, I get to keep my friends.
Automation and personalization aren’t opposites. Used properly, automation should make personal communication possible at a scale that otherwise wouldn’t be. Timing, context, and personal touches matter because the goal isn’t to check the box that something was sent. It’s to make it connect.
Persuasion is more than punctuation
There’s another part of this that I think gets overlooked.
When you read a text, you may hear a different tone than the sender intended. The sender can leave clues about how they intended it to sound, but punctuation can only take you so far.
An exclamation point can suggest excitement. An ellipsis can create a pause. Italics can add emphasis.
But persuasion is a lot more complicated than punctuation.
Take a simple sentence:
“I can’t believe you did that.”
Now say it five different ways.
It can sound angry, proud, sarcastic, impressed, or disappointed. You can say it laughing. You can say it quietly. You can pause before the last word. You can emphasize “believe,” “you,” or “that,” and each version changes the meaning.
The words never changed. The message did.
That’s how we actually communicate. Tone, pacing, emphasis, pauses, emotion, and personality carry meaning that the words alone don’t.
In a 2005 study, Justin Kruger and colleagues found that people overestimated how clearly they conveyed tone through email. In one experiment with college students, recipients distinguished sarcasm from seriousness more accurately in voice recordings than in email. The tone that seemed obvious to the sender wasn’t necessarily obvious to the recipient.
We recently put together a demo for a prospective client using one of the personalities they work with. I won’t get into who it was, but this particular person has a huge personality. Recognizable one-liners, sayings, mannerisms, and a way of speaking that is uniquely theirs.
We went through texts, emails, newsletters, and videos to understand how this person actually communicates. Not just the topics or words, but the personality behind them. Then we built a fundraising message around it and turned it into a voice note.
By the time I finished listening, I was ready to donate.
And I knew it was a demo.
The fundraising ask itself wasn’t revolutionary. What stood out to me was how it was delivered.
The personality was part of the persuasion.
The pause mattered. The emphasis mattered. The familiar sayings mattered.
Reading the same script probably would have told me what they wanted. Hearing it made me feel why they cared.
I honestly don’t remember the exact words. I remember how it made me feel.
Make the message worth consuming
We spend a lot of time measuring whether communication was delivered, opened, clicked, viewed, or converted. Those numbers matter, but they don’t necessarily explain why someone responded or what kept others from doing so.
The next opportunity may be less about adding another channel and more about making the communication itself worth consuming.
When I’m trying to reach someone, I don’t really think, “What’s the best communication channel?” I think about the person, my relationship with them, and what I’m trying to get them to do.
If I know someone and want a quick answer, I’ll text. If I need to explain something with more context, I’ll email. If it’s nuanced or I know five minutes on the phone will accomplish more than 10 emails, I’ll call.
I also adjust based on the person. There are people I know I can text and get an answer in two minutes, and others I know I need to call.
And if I’ve emailed someone four times without a response, my instinct usually isn’t to send another email. I’ll reconsider what I’m asking and how I’m reaching out.
The channel should serve the message, not the other way around.
Attention comes before persuasion
We talk a lot about persuasion in politics. Who can be persuaded? What message moves them? How frequently should we reach them? What gets them to act?
But all of that comes after something much more basic.
You have to earn their attention first. And once you have it, what you do with it matters.
Getting my attention is one thing. Getting me to respond, Google someone, click a link, or take a meeting is another. Usually there has to be enough relevance or curiosity that I want to know more. If I have to spend time figuring out why I should care, I’m probably moving on.
I’m also much more likely to act when the next step is obvious and easy.
Imagine getting an invitation to a neighborhood meeting about something you care about. “Contact us for details” leaves you with work to do. Give me the date, the place, what we’re discussing, and a way to RSVP, and I can decide whether I’m coming.
For me, it’s probably: get my attention, give me a reason to care, then make the next step simple.
The organizations that figure this out won’t necessarily be the ones that communicate the most. They’ll be the ones that get better at deciding when they have something worth saying, who should hear it, and how it should be delivered.