Hi friends 👋🏻

This week it's an email about an email. The "magic email" to be specific.

I'll explain how this works with a quick behind-the-scenes in my business. And I have questions about how this might apply for grant writers, fundraisers looking for major gifts, teams chasing sponsorships, and perhaps even job-hunters too.

---

Want links to recent emails or a sign-up link to share? Go to The Digital Landscape sign-up page​

---

👻 Ghosted much?

When was the last time you were ghosted?

And not in a fun way, like the cheeky-looking ghost emoji.

Ghosted in a situation where you put a decent amount of work into something, and then the person on the other end stopped responding.

In my consulting line of work, this happens on average perhaps once a month. Someone reaches out and schedules a free consultation to talk about a project. We chat. It sounds like a good fit, and they ask for a proposal.

I put a several hours into assembling a proposal – not an insignificant amount of work – and I send it over.

Sometimes there are some follow up questions over email. Sometimes we even do a second call to review questions and fine tune the proposal.

And then after all that communication – just sometimes – the potential client stops responding. I send a few polite reminders over the coming weeks. Nothing. 👻

I'm not one to get frustrated about it. I understand there are lots of reasons why the person I'm talking to might have run into roadblocks getting the project approved.

And while the best outcome is for a project to get approved, it's also super helpful to know if a project definitely is NOT going to happen.

If I know it's a "no", I can mark the proposal as declined, delete my "follow-up" tasks, clear the ??? time block from my project planning calendar and move on.

So how do you get un-ghosted?

🪄 The Magic Email

When I feel like I've sent enough polite follow-up emails and I just want a final answer about whether the project is going anywhere, I send my variation on "the magic email."

That link takes you to Blair Enns' website – he's a business consultant, so not necessarily super relevant to all of you working in nonprofit organizations, but that's where I came across the magic email.

And it really works.

The idea is that you send a very brief email that is intended to end the period of unresponsiveness and bring things to a conclusion.

In my experience, nine times out of ten, I get a quick response. Often, it confirms the "no" that I suspected. That allows me to clear that project out of my pipeline and move on.

But more often that you would think, it actually reinvigorates the discussion, unlocking some insight about why things stalled and what we would need to do to move forward with the project. Many times over the years this email has brought proposals back to life that I assumed were dead!

Here's a recent example. Adjust it to meet your needs:

Subject: Website project for [ORG NAME]: Closing the loop

Hi [NAME],

I haven’t heard back from you regarding the potential website project so I’m going to assume the team decided to go in a different direction or that priorities have changed.

Let me know if I can be of assistance in the future!

Best,
Ed

That's it. It's short and direct.

And it almost always gets a response. Here's Blair Enns' thoughts as to why it's so effective:

Could something like this work in your context?

Most of you on this list are not consultants or agency sales people, so this might not seem relevant to you.

But while reflecting on the success of a recent batch of magic emails I sent out after the July 4 holiday, I wondered about how this might be adapted for other contexts.

• Nonprofit development teams seeking corporate sponsorships: this is actually pretty similar – you might have sent out a pitch for sponsorship after some initial interest from a contact, but then heard nothing back. I can imagine modifying the email above to draw a line under that particular pitch, but to also keep the door open for support in the future.
• Fundraisers chasing major gifts: This might require more fine tuning, but this is another situation where a prospect that seemed warm at first appears to have turned cold. I wonder if there's a version of this email that would allow you to either remove them from the active prospects list, OR even better suddenly bring some of those anticipated gifts back to life?!
• Job hunters: Perhaps more of a stretch, but I hear from folks looking for their next position in the nonprofit communications space all the time, and it's a situation where being ghosted after initial interest is all too common. If you've been ghosted after a first-round interview, maybe try an email like this in your process to give the hiring manager an easy opportunity to either let you know you're not moving forward, or alternatively let you know that you're still in the mix but there's been a delay on their end.

Final thought: if you take a look at Blair Enns' article about the magic email, you'll see he also talks about it with a timing angle.

He argues that early September (right after Labor Day here in the US) is a great time to send these emails. People are back from the summer slow-down, and suddenly see that there are 100-ish days until the end of the year and all those unachieved 2026 goals come into sharp focus and feel urgent.

A good time for a careful nudge ...

---

Have you had success sending emails like this? If so, hit reply. I'd love to hear about it!

---