Warum werden Laaaaaaaaange Emails nicht gelesen?

I recently stumbled upon an older comic from The Oatmeal about long emails. In it, the character archives an extremely long message, and never gets around to responding. This comic offers a great example, among many, of why long emails may be harmful to your marketing efforts.

"This is gonna take some time..."

As mentioned in my last blog post, Hick's Law states that the time it takes for a person to make a decision is dependent on the number of alternatives given to them. While the relationship is logarithmic, the initial trend is that more time is needed to process additional choices. An exceptionally long email provides numerous choices which the recipient must consider one-by-one, delaying their response. In fact, too many choices may paralyze any course of action by overwhelming the recipient...