Category: Email

Tuesday, 27 May 2008

FailBox: The Broken State of Email Clients – Part 2

by Garrick van Buren 2 Comments on FailBox: The Broken State of Email Clients – Part 2

I realized I had completely taken for granted the life-changing innovation that is near-infinite email storage when I received the following message

Your mailbox has exceeded one or more size limits set by your administrator.
Your mailbox size is 75286 KB.

Mailbox size limits:
You will receive a warning when your mailbox reaches 75000 KB. You may not be able to send or receive new mail until you reduce your mailbox size.

Items in all of your mailbox folders including the Deleted Items and Sent Items folders count against your size limit.

First, I have no idea how I accumulated 75 Gig of email in a few weeks on one of my lowest volume accounts, but let’s say I did.

Second, this system has the power to halt business (no sending or receiving of email), WTF? This is like the mail boy striking because people aren’t throwing the messages away fast enough. What qualifies the messenger the arbiter of value? Baffling.

Third, this is a business account, and I’m guessing lawyers would say it’s a good idea to save all professional correspondence. I know librarians in universities do.

On top of all this, I couldn’t actually take the action requested – the interface didn’t have a ‘Deleted Items’ or ‘Sent Items’ folder in it. Remarkable.

Failbox: The Broken State of Email Clients – Part 1

by Garrick van Buren 2 Comments on Failbox: The Broken State of Email Clients – Part 1

If you’re of a certain age, as I am, your first expose to email was probably in college or at work. Processing messages daily wasn’t difficult; the number of people that had access or reason to send you messages was low and messages arrived fairly infrequently.

So quaint and last century.

Today, I’m tracking 8 email accounts, multiple Twitter accounts, 1 phone, and a number of other accounts I check infrequently1. By a conservative guesstimate, I receive 400 incoming messages daily. I suspect this is lower than some of you and higher than others.

In this context, there’s no surprise Facebook, MySpace, etc have become a primary communication mechanisms for peer communication. The restricted context makes processing messages much easier if only by reducing the number of messages. Easy, like the scenario some of us started with.

Here’s a quick survey of popular email clients
Email Client (Initial Launch)
Apple’s Mail.app (2001) direct descendant of NeXTMail (1991)
Hotmail (1996)
Microsoft Outlook (1997)
Yahoo Mail (1997)
Google Mail (2004)

While all of these applications have evolved and changed, their DNA is from a simpler time. A time with less email and no Twitter.

Spam has guaranteed receiving an email message is no longer a rare event, yet all of these clients insist on an unread indicator and its annoying little brother – the unread mail quantity indicator. All ordered reverse chronologically. Why a message has priority simply because it arrived last is baffling. Imagine lines at the IKEA managed via last-in-first-out. Riots would break out.

“My broader gripe is messaging fragmentation – creating a growing need for universal app to do mail, Twitter, Facebook, etc” – Julio Ojeda-Zapata

In Chris Anderson’s recent conversation with Russ Roberts, Chris Anderson digs into the economics of providing email clients for $0 (Yahoo, Google). It left me wondering if free is the innovation or if it’s preventing innovation.

Elsewhere:

“Personally, it feels like my Facebook stream is becoming an email inbox. I get a lot of messages, a few of them matter to me, and there are lots of business newsletters and promotions” – Jim Lastinger

1. Flickr, Facebook, Pownce, Skype.

Thursday, 4 October 2007

Email Subjects are Irrelevant, Only Sender Matters

by Garrick van Buren 6 Comments on Email Subjects are Irrelevant, Only Sender Matters

An email comes from you mom, your sister, your BFF. Does it matter what the subject line says?

No, you open it right up.

I suspect there are some commercial organizations you feel the same about. In my house, it’s DailyCandy, BabyCenter, Joyent, Amazon, our insurance agent, accountant, etc.

Any one of those organizations could send out message without a subject line and I can still guarantee they’d be read.

In light of this and a marketing conversation about subject lines and open rates, I asked around which item matters more. Sender came back nearly unanimous.

Makes me wonder if the customers requiring persuasion only by an arduously-crafted subject line are worth the trouble. They obviously don’t trust the sender – and a single email isn’t going to change that. An overall improved customer experience (including ignoring them) might start that process.

In addition – how many of the subject lines in your inbox right now are meaningful and accurately reflect the message body?

I checked Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Mail.app, and it’s not obvious how to remove the Subject column in any of them. Best I could do was in Mail.app – move the Subject column to far right and then expand the width of the other columns to push it out of sight. We’ll try this for a week and see how it feels.

Tuesday, 4 October 2005

This Email is Bloggable Signature

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on This Email is Bloggable Signature

I’ve been thinking about when to send an email verses blog. I’ve decided on a loose guideline: if more than 3 people would find something useful, I’ll blog it. If not it’s an email (or, even better, an instant message)

Somethings, like mailing lists, don’t map well to this guideline. To cover that, I’ve followed Ross Mayfield’s cue and added a “this email is bloggable” flag to my email signature.

This message is blog-able:
[x] yes [ ] please don’t

Notice this is a simplification from Mayfield’s 3 checkbox version – to me “please ask” really means “please don’t”. While reading his Email 2.0 post, I realized the sig could be simplified further. To minimize confusion, I don’t include the bloggable flag in private or “please don’t” messages anyway. That, and “please don’t” never felt right. In addition, if I don’t explicity grant you permission to use a private or semi-private email message publicly – then well, you won’t. Cause that ain’t Web 2.0 cool.

Thus, I’ve revised my flag to read:

— Feel Free to Blog This Message —

Monday, 7 March 2005

‘EOM’ for ‘End of Message’ another Email Subject Line Tag

by Garrick van Buren 3 Comments on ‘EOM’ for ‘End of Message’ another Email Subject Line Tag

I’m starting to see more tags (see Better Email Tips) in my email subject lines. Today, I received an email canceling a meeting, with all the information contained in the subject line with “(eom)” at the end.

eom: end of message

I’d recommend using it when your entire message can be included in the subject line and I suspect it could be more than you think 🙂

Tuesday, 15 February 2005

Better Email Tips

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on Better Email Tips

On MPR the other morning, they had consultant and author Marilyn Paul talking about ways to spend less time in your inbox.

Her suggestion is to institute email subject line tags. You include these tags in your email subject line. Here are the one’s I remember:

  • ty: thank you
  • nrn: no reply necessary
  • nbd: need response by date

More tips on increasing your effectiveness available in her book: It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys.