Comments on: How Are You Using Email?

By: Lee Duvalll

Lee Duvalll — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:23:53 +0000

everytime i think at email i have a headacke , i know that i subscribed to a few newsletters and now i have like 1k emails each day :(.

By: John Francis

John Francis — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:48:52 +0000

I never watch closely in my mail i only check what is important to me, other instant delete or at spam.

By: Ethan

Ethan — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:44:59 +0000

I find myself checking my email probably 7 to 10 times throughout my 8 hour day. Most of it is junk and i don’t even bother opening it up, but i guess i can’t stand to have email in my inbox. Call it OCD, call it i don’t know what…but i check mine often and can’t stand seeing a bold indox

By: Toam Dwan

Toam Dwan — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:41:30 +0000

Me too, I refuse to use IM or twitter or anything else that can interrupt my thoughts. I works great.

By: BHASKAR G N

BHASKAR G N — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 07:32:20 +0000

After opening the email, I LABEL it before opening the next. After reading all emails, which are already LABELled, I ARCHIVE them. This leaves my INBOX clean and empty, and does not frighten me next day when I open it.
We send too many emails because they are free. How many are willing to pay to send? I think if we voluntarily set aside a unit of currency (in India – a Rupee) for every email sent, then we will have a sizeable saving and also less emails.

G N BHASKAR

By: Andre

Andre — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:50:48 +0000

@TheGirlPie: I think readers define “long” by how many thoughts or ideas are expressed in an email, not how many words are in it. That’s why I believe it’s a good idea to limit any email to a single call to action. Since I don’t know the details of your operation or your standard email text, I’ll have to make assumptions. I would use my first email to the prospect strictly as a personalized introduction, then, as you suggested, link to a landing page with your terms; but also encourage them to contact me by phone or email if they have any questions.

That does mean that you’ll have more exchanges than you would if you loaded your initial email with more information. It’s tempting to amortize several short emails with one long one, but ultimately you want more conversions, not just more inquiries, so the extra effort pays for itself as more potential clients actually read what you’ve written. The object is to avoid writing defensively, trying to answer every question a potential client might have in a single email; otherwise you’ll wind up with a very efficient email that goes unread.

Precisely because of the Blackberry issue, I would avoid limiting any important text to an attachment. Paste the flat text in the body of the email, but indicate beforehand that the text that follows is also included in the attachment you’ve provided. That way the recipients will be tempted to at least scan the body for relevance.

By: @TheGirlPie

@TheGirlPie — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:37:33 +0000

I agree that most divide email users into those two camps, postcard or letter. I suspect it has to do with one’s age and when they started emailing. (I blame my own letter style in the earliest years of email for business on my advanced age, business training, and lack of volume in those days.)
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HOWEVER — it’s almost ’09 and I have an issue that no one seems to address as they beg/guide for short emails. 99% of my clients find me via my site and use me via email. A potential client takes me up on a web offer, I reply and deliver via email = long. I use this offer/results to deliver benefits to them, hear their needs, engage in conversation.
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Or, they ask how my service works; I could just use one line to direct them back to my site where they found my email address (which seems rude) but instead I paste in boiler-plate and quickly personalize and tailor it to their request = LONG.
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Or, they’ve hired me and we’ve had a phoner, and I email a RECAP because they didn’t listen, didn’t’ take notes well, didn’t understand, etc. And I want a paper trail for all of it (my poor old 2MB+ laden Outlook Express sorts my clients and everything else beautifully for filing) for legal, admin, and personalize follow-up reasons. But that = LONG EMAIL.
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Do you see a way around it? With so many using their phones to read email, I always do a “BRIEF” in 1 or 2 lines up top, but putting the text into an attachment means they’d see it maybe a day or two later (if it doesn’t get bounced as some corp. email servers do.)
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Any thoughts on this postcard+letter issue? (Yes, I use twitter but only in this persona; my real consulting business has been successful for 10+ years and does not.)
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THANKS for any feedback on how to satisfy both the short-wanters and the long-needs!

By: Andre

Andre — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:49:56 +0000

@Vered: Thanks. I’m not 100%, but at least functional.

@EMM: I use Twitterfox for my Twitter client, but disable the automatic notification, so it doesn’t have the disruptive aspect of IM. Otherwise I’d do without Twitter.

By: EMM

EMM — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:47:03 +0000

Refuse to use IM or twitter or anything else that can interrupt my thoughts. Email is ideal for tracking stuff. Robust filtering into buckets of read laters vs read and respond nows (at a time of my own choosing) are great. And my daily e-mail load is somewhere between 400-500 messages and more when some of the lists I read get busy.

By: Vered - MomGrind

Vered - MomGrind — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 02:32:24 +0000

Glad you’re feeling better.

I process to zero, check email twice a day, and would like to get rid of telephones.