Making Email Easier for Everyone
Have a look at the emails in your in-box. What do you notice? If they're anything like mine, you'll see a hopeless mixture of senders' names and subject headings. It's very hard sometimes to sort the wheat from the chaff, even after the spam filter has done its bit. Now think how your emails will look in someone else's in-box. Is it clear to them who they are from? It is clear to them what they are about? How many emails do you see that just have someone's first name as the sender? Not very useful, is it? Or the sender's name isn't a name at all, just some cryptic words that mean lot to the sender but nothing at all to the recipient.
The problem is that when people are setting up their email client on a new pc, they take the easy options each time and just type in the first thing that comes into their heads for each field they have to fill in. You may have done so as well, nothing wrong with that as long as you now check that your emails state clearly who the sender is, ie, your full name, properly formatted, ie "Mark Griffin", not "mark" nor "griffin", or even worse, "work". You'd be surprised how many people differentiate their email accounts between home and work, and leave it at that. Then, when you send a new email, always give it a meaningful subject header. Don't put "Your quote" even if that's what it is, it won't mean anything to someone receiving several of these, or to you if you get a response. Quote from whom? Quote for what? "Your quote for mind-reading lessons" would be better. It will help you too when you need to search back over previous correspondence, which you will need to do from time to time. How much easier it will be when all your emails clearly show who they are from and what they are about.
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- Mark Griffin's blog
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