Storming the gate doesn't work. Knowing the gatekeeper does.
My inbox is not a meritocracy. It's not a democracy. It is a dictatorship. And my subjects, the readers, love me for it because I'm the one absorbing the noise on their behalf.
I just received a message from a public relations organization that made me want to pull out (what little remains) of my hair. The subject line was enticing enough to pique my curiosity, but the body text made me seriously consider introducing my forehead to the nearest wall at speed.
In a crunchy nutshell, they were eager to inform me that their client, Company A, was tentatively poised to enter into a forward-looking, strategically aligned agreement with Company B to evaluate the possibility that the two organizations might one day elect to initiate a synergistic, cross-functional, paradigm-shifting, pre-collaborative exploration of a potentially transformative, next-generation opportunity that could, at some indeterminate point in the fullness of time, redefine the global landscape of something or other as we currently understand it—leveraging best-in-class thought leadership and stakeholder alignment, of course.
OK, maybe I am paraphrasing and reading between the lines a little, but that’s pretty much the impression this missive made on (what I laughingly call) my mind. I wanted to cry out, “Why are you doing this to me?” and “On what planet do you think I would be remotely interested in this drivel?” and… well, you get the idea. In addition to leaving me wearing my frowny face, I made a mental note to treat future messages from this source with the contempt and disdain they would undoubtedly deserve.
Let’s take a step back. I get a lot of press-release-type emails clamoring for my attention. And they keep on coming. My Inbox is pinging in the background as I write these words. Some of these messages come directly from the companies themselves (especially startups), while others originate with the third-party marketing and PR organizations that represent them.
It’s important to note that different editors wear different hats and are interested in different things. This isn’t a “one size fits all” kind of thing. For the purposes of this column, let’s focus on my role as an editor for EE Journal. In this case, I’m interested in pretty much anything related to science and technology. In particular, I focus on everything from chiplets and advanced packaging to AI accelerators and next-generation sensor technologies.
I flatter myself that I’m reasonably well known for this sort of thing. Contrariwise, I’m also known for not being interested or involved in the business side of things. This makes it all the more confusing when someone sends me a press release saying that some company I have never heard of has appointed someone I don’t know to some position like “Head of Global Strategic Synergy and Stakeholder Alignment.”
Alternatively, they desperately want me to know that the company they represent is delighted to announce that they’ve just closed a new round of funding. In cases like these… I SIMPLY DON’T CARE! The more of this type of message I read, the frownier my face gets and the more I want to cry out, “Stop wasting my time, people!” But here's the thing: it's not really my time I'm worried about. Every minute I spend wading through meaningless corporate waffle is a minute I'm not spending finding genuinely interesting technologies and companies to share with EE Journal's readers. Those readers trust me to separate signal from noise. When someone sends me drivel, they aren't just wasting my time—they're trying to waste my readers’ time as well.
The companies pinging my inbox are like barbarians at the gate. Some seem convinced that if they shout loudly enough, send enough emails, or sprinkle enough buzzwords into a press release, the gates will simply swing open. Sadly for them, that's not how the game is played. Storming the gate doesn't work. Knowing the gatekeeper does.
Someone once asked me how my Inbox triage process works—what gets read, what gets skipped, what lands in my "must do these" pile, and why. That’s a tricky one, because I’ve never articulated this as “a process” as such; it’s something I do on an instinctive level.
I typically at least scan every email, “just in case,” but the scan may take only a couple of seconds before… “Next!” Generic messages from newswire services typically get short shrift because I have the impression they are throwing metaphorical spaghetti at the allegorical wall to see what sticks.
I know that people use automated systems to send the same message to a bunch of their contacts, but anything that starts off “Hi Clive” (my given name) rather than “Hi Max” (what everyone calls me apart from my mum and little bro’) tells me that the sender probably doesn’t know me all that well. Not a major problem in itself, but it loses them a couple of “virtual points” before we’ve even got started.
Other clues accumulate surprisingly quickly. A subject line that's longer than some novellas. A pitch about "exciting developments in technology" that never really mentions what technology we’re talking about. An email asking for coverage that makes it painfully obvious the sender has never actually read EE Journal. None of these is fatal in isolation, but together they suggest someone is broadcasting rather than communicating.
I don’t like long, convoluted subject lines that are simply copies of the press release title, desperately trying to squeeze in as many search engine optimization (SEO) keywords as possible. I much prefer short, snappy subject lines that get to the point.
I’ve also noted an increasing tendency for the bodies of some PR emails to be three-line summaries that invite me to click a link to learn more. Now they are making me work for something I didn’t ask for in the first place. I don’t like it.
What I do like is something that entices me and makes me want to know more. Something that summarizes the technology in question and teases me with potential implications and applications. Something that makes me want to check out the company website and then respond to the original email to set up a video call so I can dig deeper.
Nothing is set in stone. Occasionally, someone I’ve never heard of will reach out of the blue, like when Josh Elijah, the founder and CEO of BotBlox, “pinged” me to say that he was working on an 8-port, 10/100 Mbps Ethernet switch and router measuring just 1.0 x 1.0 x 0.5 inches. His pitch was so dead-on for my specific beats that it was clearly the work of someone who'd done his homework on me. “Tell me more!” I said to myself.
At the end of the day, my time is limited (after one’s health, time truly is the most precious commodity of all). The best way for a company to get my attention is when I’m approached by someone I know personally, either via meeting them at conferences or by years of interaction over the interweb.
These people know my areas of interest, and they understand what will “tickle my fancy,” as it were. When I see an email from them, I’ll immediately assign it a higher priority. Even though they are sending me the same material as everyone else, the fact that it’s prefaced by a personal note saying something like, “Hi Max, I’m working with a new company that’s doing something really cool with xxxxxx. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was right up your street and that it would make a great column for EE Journal. Take a look at the attached press release, then let me know if you’d like me to set up a conference call.”
The thing about marketing and PR professionals is that they already know “all the players,” like which editors work for which publications, and what topics will interest them.
There’s also the concept of trading favors. If I write about one of your clients today, then sometime down the road—when I’m looking for something interesting to cover—I’ll expect you to give me priority. It’s not transactional in a crude sense, but there is an understanding that we will help each other when the opportunity arises.
This is exactly where experienced marketing and PR professionals make all the difference. If you’re a startup, you may be tempted to “go it alone.” After all, you know your technology better than anyone else. But knowing your technology and knowing how to present it to the right people, in the right way, at the right time, are two very different things. The good marketing and PR professionals don’t just send emails—they open doors. They know who to talk to, what to say, and how to say it in a way that makes people like me sit up and take notice.
Even large companies with in-house teams can fall into the trap of “broadcasting” rather than communicating. Sending more messages isn’t the answer. Sending better, more targeted, more thoughtful messages is.
As I mentioned at the start of this column, my inbox is a dictatorship, my readers are the subjects who love me for it, and the question for anyone reading this is whether you've been trying to storm the gate or whether you’ve taken the time to understand the gatekeeper.
So, if you want your message to land in my “Well, that certainly got my attention” pile, rather than my “introduce my forehead to wall” category, it might be worth enlisting someone who already knows how to make that happen.
