Ep 180: How To Influence More People In Business By Leveling Up Your Communication Skills with Kim Arnold

Jaryd Krause: (00:00)

Better communication equals more influence and more influence equals more money. Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause host of the buying online businesses podcast. And in this episode, I was speaking with Kim Arnold, who is the founder of the world's number one email writing training course, Email Engagement. Now, this is an available license program that organizations can use to train all their staff to write emails and build relationships and get results within their business.

Now, Kim also works directly with leading organizations to help them connect faster with their stakeholders and get the results they need. She helps thousands of people around the world transform their virtual and in-person communication. So they can persuade, influence and make their message stick. She's worked with clients like Accenture, Shearman and Sterling and JP Morgan and her book, "Email Attraction" was shortlisted in the financial times, as the best business book.

Jaryd Krause: (00:53)

Now Kim is regularly featured in the media, like in Forbes and on BBC radio and CNBC. Now in this podcast episode, Kim and I were lucky enough to talk about some scary stats on how much time you spend in your inbox and what you can do to reduce that. We could talk about why we need to level up our email communication skills, which can help us get better results in our business.

We just talk about how to make people feel good after they have read our emails, which Hello isn't that crazy. It's what we should actually be doing. Nobody wants to get an email and feel like I'm just drained after it. We want to make people feel good for responding to our emails. And that's what we teach in this podcast episode. We also talk about how to grab attention with their emails and why that's really important at the start of your email.

Jaryd Krause: (01:36)

Then we talk about how to keep your emails short and sweet and why that's key these days. If you want good virtual communication, then we dive into nifty tactics and strategies of what you can write in your emails to get people to take some sort of action. We also talk about cool ways to sign off on and email some ways that, some startups and some tech startups are using to sign off in their emails, which is cool. And we talk about how you can actually connect with the person you're emailing and why that's so valuable and how that can create influence through your communication.

Now there's so much value in this podcast episode. If you have an email and you have an inbox and you're doing it yourself, or you have a team, no matter what you should be listening to this podcast episode because it's so valuable in how you communicate with everybody within your life and within your business, that's going to help you get better results.

Jaryd Krause: (02:26)

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Kim Arnold: (03:16)

Pleasure, great to be here Jaryd.

Jaryd Krause: (03:17)

Now this conversation that we're going to have is very relevant to me and my business around communication and people that I've hired to help me with email communication within the business. And there's going to be some selfish questions in here that are going to be also valuable for the listeners too.

So this we're going to go broad and then we're going to get, we're going to narrow in and then find some golden nuggets within this. And we treat this like a training episode for not just my team but everybody else's team when they're hiring assistance and people that can help them with their email communication, even if they're doing it themselves right. When you meet somebody to party, and they say, Hey Kim, what do you do? What's your answer?

Kim Arnold: (03:58)

I try not to make them run a mile by talking about email that it's not the sexiest party topic, is it? Hey, you know what I do but actually, my role is really helping people to engage with those who matter most. So whether that's your customers, your colleagues, or your stakeholders, we do that by helping with an email with virtual communication in general. So we train teams on how to communicate better, how to write better, and how to have more impact, and we also train trainers in organizations so that they can do that themselves.

Jaryd Krause: (04:38)

So you train teams in email communication but this is 2022. We're recording this and it will be relevant moving on into the next decade, and even longer with virtual communication. What is email communication? Why is it important for us in our businesses, our online businesses?

Kim Arnold: (04:58)

Well, there are some really horrifying statistics. We spend on average 52,000 hours of our life on email. So that's about six years of your life and that's more than you're going to spend eating. It's more than you'll spend going on holiday. And it's more than you'll spend socializing, and 90% of people have never been taught how to write a good one.

If you think of the money that we might spend on self-improvement if we're an entrepreneur or within a business, we train our teams to do sales. We do presentation training imposter syndrome. We tackle all these things. But the one thing that we are doing day in, day out, we are novices. We really don't have any idea what we're doing. Most of us have learned how to write at school or at university.

Kim Arnold: (05:53)

And those were essays where people were actually paid to read what you've written, and it's completely useless when it comes to writing really pity emails, where you need to get to the point in seconds. On average, we have three seconds to get someone's attention within an email, just three seconds before they decide, do you know what? I can't be bothered with this. They click close and they're never going to open your email again. So great email communication is about grabbing attention and sustaining it, and then being very clear about what you want to happen next.

Jaryd Krause: (06:31)

I love it. So let's come back to grabbing attention. I find that super important. Just yesterday had this conversation with two of my clients in our master mastermind around headlines, not just headlines but also when you first get into the inbox into the email, how do you get straight to the point, but make it attractive? The person who's reading it it's about work but they want to read it because it's important and it's got them curious.

So I'd love to break down that shortly and get a bit more in-depth around that. But what are some of the new rules you say you've got some new rules of communication for a virtual world, what are some of those new rules that you have coined that we should be understanding and using in our communication in this virtual world of communication I guess?

Kim Arnold: (07:22)

Well, I think we need to think more billboards and not Bible, gone are the days where someone might have only had 10 or 15 emails in their inbox each day, or they would only have emails to deal with. I remember looking at a LinkedIn post the other day and this entrepreneur was on there and he was really proud of himself.

And he was saying I've really streamlined everything that I've done. And I've prioritized the platforms that I use to communicate. And these are the order I do them in. So he had, WhatsApp first, then he had discord, then he had email, then he had slack, then he had LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter DMS. And literally, this list just went on and on.

Kim Arnold: (08:17)

There were about 17 platforms on there. How does this guy get anything done? Let alone being super productive. I have no idea but that is the case for so many of us we have our phones sitting there, blinking away at us, and our attention is being divided so much.

And yet when we communicate with people, we're imagining, and we don't even know that we were doing this but it's almost like we think, they've got all the time in the world. They've got a cup of coffee here and they're just going to sit back and go, I've got an email from Jaryd. That's awesome. Let me get a cup of coffee. I'm going to set aside half an hour and I'm just going to get through it.

Jaryd Krause: (09:07)

That's what you've been waiting for in this email all day, just ready for it.

Kim Arnold: (09:12)

So there's this big disconnect between the amount of time and energy that people have to consume our emails and our approach. We are still writing too much. We're still waiting too long to get to the point. So as you say, how we start, our emails are so important. And in my book here, Email Attraction, I talk about three different parts of an email the first one is your hook, and it is about how do you get that attention in the first three seconds?

How do you show your audience that this isn't going to be a heavy read? This is something that is going to be useful to you. This is going to be interesting. There's a great quote by the British designer, William Morris. He was a 19th-century designer and he says, don't have anything in your house that you don't believe to be beautiful or know to be useful.

Kim Arnold: (10:19)

And it's a bit the same with emails. Look, if it isn't beautiful. So if it isn't like engaging or fun or interesting or different or attention-grabbing or if it's not useful for that person, by the way, for your reader, not for you, if it's not either of those two things, then it needs to go.

So we have to be much more ruthless with our approach to email. We need to be more rigorous. We need to imagine our readers drowning in information, and we have to kind of get through all of that to get to them. So we need to work much harder than we've ever done to get that attention.

Jaryd Krause: (10:59)

I love that. Let's unpack that just before we do for people listening. We're not talking about our audience of sending out an automated email to thousands of people on our email list. We're talking about our audience of one person that we're emailing that we're having communication with. That's either helping us grow our business or inquiring about our business, or it's a one-to-one conversation virtually via email.

And when you say we need to grab attention, we need to do it fast needs to be useful. We need to get to the point, what are some of the things that we can do to grab attention that first sort of three seconds?

Kim Arnold: (11:36)

Well, it's interesting, you just mentioned email marketing and I think there is this significant lack of balance between time and effort. Often we put into email marketing where we're like obsessing over subject lines and openers and response rates and AB testing and all these things. But the emails we send out every day, we just kind of dash them off like this.

So actually applying a bit more of the rigor that we might use in our email marketing to thousands of people, to the sort of one-to-one emails is a really good approach and a really good tactic. So your hook, the start of your email needs to engage people immediately. So, ideally, you will start with you instead of I, and this is one of the big mistakes that people make writing emails.

Kim Arnold: (12:24)

If you're writing someone that perhaps you don't know, I'm writing to introduce myself, it's all about me or I'm writing to ask for X I'm. Do I want this or do I want that? And of course, the person reading it is just sitting there thinking, well, what's in it for me. Why should I care? Why should I care about you? I've got a hundred other emails to attend to, and this is all about you.

So starting literally with the word you, instead of I is a really simple shift that you can make. So instead of, I'm writing to introduce myself, it could be your name came up when I was talking to a mutual friend recently so that we reframe that in the context of something that's going to pique their interest or one of the things that people do a lot is a very generic opener.

Kim Arnold: (13:19)

So I hope you are well, I trust this email finds you well, and they're just really bland and generic and they don't get people's attention. And this is valuable real estate. This is the most expensive part of your email, and you're just wasting it. You're really wasting it. So we need to get personal. If we know that person make it personal. How was your weekend? Did you get rained on this morning? Probably not in Australia, but certainly here in the UK.

How was your daughter's birthday party at the weekend? Did you survive that zoom marathon that you had on Friday? Something just to engage something to show your reader, look I'm not an autopilot. I haven't cut and pasted this. I'm giving you attention, individual attention as my reader, time and effort and care has gone into that email.

Kim Arnold: (14:20)

And sometimes it's just about that opening sentence is just enough to get people's attention. And conversely, some people don't even need that soft opener. They want to just get to the point. We've always all worked with those people who have maybe just replied with one-line emails they want to get to the point. So that's okay too. Sometimes it's like, look, here's the data you asked for, or yes, we can. We can make that happen for you, and you can just get to the point. So we need to get a bit more creative about these hooks, this openness to our emails.

Jaryd Krause: (15:00)

I love it using the word you getting to the point but the big thing that I want to touch on and unpack now is you mentioned connecting with them, making it personal. And I think what I like to do is when I'm teaching people that are helping me with my emails because my inbox is going just next level crazy. It's just too much.

So, I'm trying to teach what I do unconsciously. And what I like to do is make my emails personal because the goal is to deepen the relationship through communication for us. After all, that builds our brand and provides more trust and it helps both parties connect at a higher level and both of us respect each other for it. So we can both get what we want out of our communication effectively. And one of the ways that I like to do it is by making it personal.

Jaryd Krause: (15:57)

And what I like to teach is at least acknowledging what the person has previously said in their email for example, they may say something about their life. They may say something about what has happened. And the first thing that we write is at least acknowledging, be like, oh, that's crazy. Can't believe that happened to you thanks for letting me know.

I didn't know how hard that was or whatever it is, depending on what they said in their email. But I feel really acknowledging provides a deeper connection at the start of the email. And I think adding you, and some of the other things you mentioned are good. Do you have some other ways that we can connect deeper through our communication virtually by email?

Kim Arnold: (16:40)

Sure, and I love that example that you've just given it's a great strategy because it shows your listening email.

Jaryd Krause: (16:49)

That's the most important thing.

Kim Arnold: (16:51)

It's a conversation with a pause that's how it should feel. This isn't a monologue, and so far too often we treat it like almost like a sort of posting platform rather than an engagement and conversation. So when we start thinking of it as a conversation, well, what would you say in person, as you said, you would acknowledge what someone has said. You would ask someone how they are and really want to know the answer. So I think that's a great technique.

The other thing that we can do is really watch the kind of language that we use specifically, the types of words that we use because typically I might say to you, oh, Hey Jaryd, how are you doing? How was your weekend? But then when people come to email, it would be dear Jaryd, I trust this email finds you well, further to our conversation last week, please find attached to the report kind regards.

Kim Arnold: (17:54)

And we slip into quite a formal mode of speech on email and it can be quite subconscious but there are many reasons that we do this. I think particularly older generations, this was more expected, this sort of very professional speak people who might have started their careers in corporates as well.

That can be very hard to sort of shake off that formal language but we really need to be careful because that kind of language creates distance and it creates barriers. And what we want to do is create nearness and a sense of conversation. So using language that we would say with someone in person is so important. So down to words like utilize, I wouldn't say to my kids, oh, stop eating your chips with your hand, can you utilize some cutlery?

Kim Arnold: (18:54)

It just wouldn't happen. So we need to use really straightforward down to earth, language use not utilize, and we need to think about how we structure our sentences. So using contractions can be a really great way to sound more conversational. So instead of we will come back to you so that just loosens up your language a little bit and it makes it much easier to read because we're not having to struggle with longer words.

It makes our email shorter in general which everyone loves, no one said, oh, I wish it was a great email, but I wish it had been longer, it just doesn't happen. So there are lots of benefits for the conversational language but that engagement feeling like you are having a conversation with someone, but it just happens to be over email but it's very similar to the conversation that you might have on the phone or in person.

Kim Arnold: (20:07)

And that's really important.

Jaryd Krause: (20:08)

It's so good to hear, these are some of the things that I have taught that I didn't consciously know that I did with my emails until I had to teach it. And I want to ask you a question about, branding and personalization in how we speak. For example, is it valuable to like I'm an Australian and I have Australian slang? I used to put a lot more pressure and stress on myself to be serious and professional because I was in a business, I'm teaching people to buy a business.

So I've got to be professional, of course, and I used to treat that pretty seriously. And now that I've realized that the more I am myself in my language, in my podcast, contents, conversations, and emails, the deeper the relationships can become. And so I'm embracing my slang like saying mate, saying bloke, saying all these different things that we say in Australia, which is pretty normal.

Jaryd Krause: (21:07)

I used to even change m tone and try to not have as much accent, but now I'm really harnessing it. And I do that in my email communication virtually, I'll say different things that are very unique to how I talk usually is that valuable for people when you're communicating with them being yourself? Like I know that may sound over the top. That's just how I talk, so why don't I type like that? Is that what you're suggesting doing is personalizing it by bringing ourselves into emails and just talking through email how we would normally talk verbally.

Kim Arnold: (21:46)

We need to be mindful of our audience. So, if we were writing to the chairman of the board, we might want to reign it in a bit but in general, we can put so much more of our personality into our emails than we think we can. And if you think about the emails that you enjoy receiving the ones if you get an email from them, you're like, oh, I'm going to open that one.

It's from those people that put their personality into their emails, they sound friendly, they sound warm and they sound like them. So, and I've been on a very similar journey to you, Jaryd, I came from a corporate background. I was a global head of comms,15 years ago.

Kim Arnold: (22:38)

I was very used to writing in quite a buttoned-up and formal way. And it can feel quite vulnerable at first to loosen up and let a bit more of yourself out there. But I work with corporates now and all sorts of businesses and they get full Kim every time. I used to be very afraid of exclamation marks, for example, in emails, and worried that they might make me look a bit flippant or frivolous but that's how I speak.

I have energy, I get excited about things. So I'm going to put my exclamation mark in there if I'm excited about something, and likewise, as you say with local slang, if you sent me a brilliant email actually when I didn't respond to your first email about this podcast, I was having a crazy week and you sent me a follow-up and it said, should I send out the search party, Kim?

Kim Arnold: (23:40)

And it made me laugh so much. You got an instant reply. And I think that's a great example. It's about being the best thing in someone's inbox. How can you be a bright spark in their inbox? And more often than not, you can do that by sharing your personality, the other interesting point of this.

And when we are talking about personal brand, the way that we get people to trust us is my consistency, having a very different online persona to how you are in real life is more of a problem these days because the two worlds are clashing far more than they ever were. We're seeing people on camera now. So, it's not just a telephone, so our worlds need to mesh.

Kim Arnold: (24:35)

And so many times, there's actually a teacher at one of my children's schools, they go to different schools, so I'm not going to name the child or the school. Who sends horrible emails that sound really prickly and slightly passive-aggressive. And I know this person in real life is warm, friendly, caring, and lovely, but because the tone is so formal and stiff and buttoned up and it makes her sound like a completely different person.

So it can have that real detrimental effect about making people feel that we're someone different perhaps we come across as a bit cold or standoffish or prim or uptied or just not fun. So, I'm all for it, and I think this will happen more and more. There are great TikTok videos out there with Gen Z companies who are saying, look, this is how we sign off our emails.

And it's like, Hey, bye or laters, or finger guns was another one. Someone had written finger guns to sign off their email, and I'm like, I love this. It doesn't necessarily work for every environment I'm sure my corporate clients would probably still have a heart attack if I sent them something like that. But I love this new energy that younger generations are bringing to email. And I think I'm all for it.

Jaryd Krause: (26:16)

There are two things that you mentioned that just connected well in your explanation like how you feel about the email being prickly. And I thought about, oh, how you, I was about to ask you a question from the word that you used, how you feel about the email, and then you mention the old mate's finger guns. And then you also mentioned signing off in. I want to ask you, what are some of the other ways, what's important is to finish people, finish that email and be like, yes, that was good, I'm glad or I applied to that or I'm glad I read that.

We can come back to like how bad a paragraph. I would probably put a blanket statement in here and you can correct me if I'm wrong. That any paragraph in an email doesn't belong, but also to add to that, what are some of the other things that we can do to make sure people feel good about reading our emails other than the sign-off and some of the other things I know that we mentioned a few, but maybe you've got some more in the toolkit.

Kim Arnold: (27:18)

There's always more, this took a couple of years to write. So there arethere are some amazing tips here, but emails that are easy to read take a bit more time and effort to write. So easy reading is hard writing and this is what we need to remember. So quite often we are on autopilot with emails. So we're sitting there, we're like, oh right, I'm going to bang out 20 emails this morning.

I'm going to do this, and we pat ourselves in the back high five, I've done it. I'm going to go and get that coffee that I promise myself but actually, we need to value quality over quantity so much more. So putting more time and effort into each email, really thinking about our audience, who am I writing to?

Kim Arnold: (28:08)

What's their email style? How can I be finger guns or do I need to be a little bit more buttoned-up? I used to have a boss who used to reply to emails with Nike, which meant just do it. I never sent him more than 10 words at a time because I knew it would really frustrate him. So who am I writing to? I call it my three W's in the book. So who am I writing to? What do I want to happen next? And this is an interesting one because very often when I challenge my clients on this and we're sitting there in a training session and we are looking at an old email that they might have written, they brought along with them.

Kim Arnold: (28:52)

I say, okay, what was the one thing that you wanted to happen next? And they go, oh, I think it was this. And I said, look, it's taken you a minute to think about what you wanted. The reader's never going to know, and they're not going to bother waiting through this email. So really having clarity about what is the one thing that you want to happen next. So who are you writing to?

What's the one thing that will you want to happen next? And the third w is why, why should they care? What is in it for them? And it's amazing how many things we can switch on their heads a little bit. That may, I'm going back to my earlier point about being less me, and more about the other person. This can help.

Kim Arnold: (29:39)

So if you are asking someone I had great feedback actually from someone who read the book and she's like Kim, oh my God, this works. I've had a hundred percent reply to my email and I'm a company secretary in a bank. And I only write to ask people for boring and mundane things, and she'd found that just by shifting this she was asking people to fill out reports and gather information and do all this kind of really dry stuff but she was finding a way to make it interesting to them.

If you do this, then this benefit might happen. So that's really important. So those three why's, I think help us to get in that right head space, and to your point, the next thing that we really need to remember is, as you say, if it's not vital, one of my latest trainers for my Email Engagement program that we've trained, he said, Kim, I call it scorched earth tactics.

Kim Arnold: (30:52)

I go back to my email and I just rip stuff out. And he says, I'm careful not to strip out a personality that has to stay my voice, the warmth, the friendliness. But if it's not absolutely vital, it's got to go. And I liken this to packing your suitcase to go on vacation. It's very easy just to dump stuff in, it's like, oh, I'm going for three days, but I'm going to pack 10 pairs of underwear.

Like you just don't need this stuff but Hey, look, my suitcase is this big and I can fit it all in. And then you get there and you don't wear the stuff and you think, oh my goodness, I could have just taken hand luggage. And I'm never going to do this again. And it's the same with your email, just because you can write it doesn't mean you should.

Kim Arnold: (31:44)

So stripping back, is this really important? Can I strip out redundant words? Like I've just used one really very definitely. Are there kind of clunky phrases with regards to stuff like this that we just can pull, am I beating around the Bush? I see a lot of my clients writing emails because we're all hybrid working. It's like, oh are you free? Next week or the week after to do a call or would you prefer zoom or maybe teams, or if you are back in the office a couple of days a week, maybe we could do a coffee, but it's okay. If you prefer a phone call, let me know what you want.

Jaryd Krause: (32:29)

It's like decision fatigue right there. That's all it is in that email. Just decision fatigue.

Kim Arnold: (32:36)

So, all of that thinking about how we could just strip out, be more precise, are you free on Tuesday at two o'clock for a coffee, if they're not, they will come back and tell you, but let's make it easy for them. Let's strip out all that unwanted information so that they can get to the point and make it easy for them.

They've got limited time and they will appreciate it if you are that bright spot in their inbox, you get to the point you're friendly, you're warm, you're engaging, you're interesting, and you just get to the point. Everyone loves that.

Jaryd Krause: (33:15)

I really like that explanation, and when you are thinking about that I like to think quickly. Usually, it clicks titles and stuff like that. But the coffee thing is like my explanation. If I was to teach somebody to run an email that like, Hey, do you want to go get a coffee? Would be like on a scale of 10 scales of one to 10, how much you like a coffee question mark, let's catch up Tuesday this time or Wednesday this time question mark, and then finger guns.

Jaryd Krause: (33:45)

Would that work?

Kim Arnold: (33:47)

I always say to clients, experiment, I think sometimes we can go to click Beatty. I think there's a bit of sort of tiredness now. Like, oh God, another cheesy sales email where they're just trying to get my attention was something kind of weird. I saw one on LinkedIn the other day that was entitled something like someone had posted it and said, oh, I just got this, and it was called something like your dog just died or something horrific like that. I wanted to get your attention but exactly. I think there's a delicate balance there. People still want to feel like even if you might be sending out, 30 of these emails a week, this is still personal.

Kim Arnold: (34:41)

So I do encourage wherever you can to find that thing, going back to what you were saying, what is that one thing that you know about that other person, can you reference something that they've done recently? Everyone likes to have their ego flattered a little bit. So, that really great article that you wrote but reference something specific in it.

So I thought your point around, employer branding was really interesting, my take on it is this anyway, would love to continue the discussion. So just showing that you are taking a real interest in them, we all like to be made to feel special and you have the power to do that with emails. So, getting that balance right, I think is really important.

Jaryd Krause: (35:27)

I love it. If people didn't get a good enough reason in this podcast episode, they should have but if they need more encouragement, tell us why people should get your book.

Kim Arnold: (35:39)

Well it's short for a start, so you can read this maybe in an hour and a half, and it's short and sweet, a little bit like me and it's going to give you really practical advice. This isn't a business book, God knows we all have them. Don't we all the business books that sit on our shelves that were like, I am going to read it, and it's just gathering dust and I didn't want to write those.

So, it's short, it's sweet, and it's packed full of weird illustrations. It got lots of email makeovers before and after so that you can see those transformations as well. And there are all sorts of emails in there. So, if you are writing to someone you don't know or if it's someone, a colleague or a stakeholder, all sorts of different ones, it will teach you how to start your emails, end your emails, and everything in between. So, Email Attraction is the book, and Email Engagement is the program. If anyone wants to get in touch.

Jaryd Krause: (36:43)

There'll be links to both of those in the show notes. So thank you so much. Going to have to get a couple of copies of those for the team. Now, thank you so much for coming on for everybody that is listening. Thank you for listening. If you are going to own an online business, you'd be ridiculous not to listen to this podcast episode again and level up your email communication.

But also if anybody else with an online business, is leaving communication between themselves and their customers at a bare minimum and not doing themselves in their business justice. If you don't share this podcast episode with them. So please do so. Yes, selfishly it helps us help more people with the show but it'll be great to help more people that you know, and have better email communication. So thanks so much for coming on. Kim, I'll speak to you guys soon.

Kim Arnold: (37:34)

Pleasure, bye-bye.