Who's Reading Your Email Communications?

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and she said she was outsourcing her email. She plans to hire a virtual assistant to take care of that mundane task - she doesn't have the time.

Which made me start thinking about who was actually reading the emails marketing sends. If marketing spends their time creating personas and profiles of their prospects and developing marketing messages intended to be relevant and personalized, just for them, what happens when their virtual or executive assistant is the one sifting through their email?

And I've no doubt more of this is coming. Although I relish my email and I'd be terrified to turn it over to someone else, I'm betting that there are a lot of people who aren't quite as thrilled about slogging through a bunch of stuff looking for something to make their day.

I also happen to know someone who sends everything to archives except people on his white list, sentencing those messages to that "someday" when he might have extra time. I addressed a similar issue a while back in a post called Are You In Your Lead's Silos?

Salespeople have dealt with "gatekeepers" for a long time, but what about marketers? The onus is now on you — twice. Yep - twice. Here's why:

• First - Your communications have to be relevant to the interpretation the gatekeeper puts on the boss' instructions - relevant enough to get that person to pass on your communication to the boss. As an outside issue, that person is also on a different plane in the organization and may hear or deal with issues that further color their perception of the message you send, or what the instructions mean.


• Second - Once the boss gets it, it had better be relevant to him/her, as well. Otherwise it will reflect badly on the assistant, and believe me, that mistake won't happen twice.
  

You're not developing that content to meet the needs of one audience, but two. And this scenario gets more likely every day - depending on who you sell to, of course. Then again, what if virtual assistants become more prevalent? Have you factored in the persona of your potential gatekeepers?