An Email Communication Lesson

My second grader plays soccer. Due to COVID the local league cancelled its spring 2020 season. I deleted the emails from the league about fall registration because we did not plan to have her play. She mentioned wanting to play this spring, but I had not received any emails from the league about spring registration. It turns out that we missed the deadline, so I had to sign her up for a wait list and pay a $30 late fee. I also had to create a new account in their system for her.

I emailed the league to ask about this, and their response was that they migrated to a new registration system last fall and sent out multiple emails about it then…when my daughter had no plans to play. Seriously?

There are a few email communication lessons here:

• Don’t assume your email will be read.
• Your audience will not act on information that is not relevant and timely.
• No one remembers an email from six months ago.
• Your audience won’t do all the work for you to stay in touch.