Tag: email Page 1 of 2

Wanna Cyber, fname lname?

On January 4, 2022

“Whether you’re partaking in deals this year or passing them by, take a moment to embrace the season’s true gift: all the emails you’ve been meaning to unsubscribe from, all in one place, all at the same time… stacked atop one another like desperate Jenga blocks.”
Spam, Spam, Spam cartoon | Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

I’ve taken this early Christmas present and removed myself (for now) from so many needy marketers begging for my attention. And then my money.

Many of them I can understand how and why. But there’s another class I can’t figure out why I would have asked for this. And the truth is, I didn’t. It’s spam.

The sneakiest form of spam uses marketing automation tools to wrap badly targeted messaging in a shallow wrapper of personalization.

One of the many benefits of using “peroty” as my identity online means that anything addressed to “Mr. Peroty” or “Hey there, Peroty” means the messages aren’t from people or placed I need to concern myself with.

Right into the trash/spam you go.

No Reply

By Carl

On December 29, 2017

In Links and Quotes

Embrace the idea of a yes-reply email address. It’ll keep that communication lane open between you and your customer. It’ll make customers realize that you do value their time and will give them some of yours if they want it.
No Reply Addresses — Medium

This has always bugged me. If you use a no-reply mailbox to communicate with customers, provide them another way to reach you. Even if it’s not the address you’re using, give customers a way to reach a human being.

It’s frustrating to reach out to support and find none.

Rules for Email

By Carl

On April 10, 2017

In Observations

I spend a lot of time in email. If you’re reading this, you also spend a lot of time in email. Either you’re waiting for new support requests to come in, or work to show up from your boss or you’re corresponding with friends and loved ones. Email is everywhere and it comes in like a tidal wave. It’s worth setting some ground rules with people you email.

Set Email Hours

For instance, I don’t email people outside of work hours. If I happen to look at email after work to pull some bit of information I need and I see something needing a reply, I may draft the reply and leave it as a draft. I don’t need to send that reply now.

I do this because I don’t want to teach people I am reachable by email outside of work hours. Even if it’s just one person, word spreads. If I email one person back in the evening or the weekend, it won’t be long before people are emailing me at all times for responses and expecting one.

Blind Carbon Copy (BCC)

I will let this author share my thoughts about BCC as they’re clearer than anything I’ve ever said.

There are only two legitimate uses for bcc. First, explicitly moving someone to bcc who no longer needs to be part of the ongoing exchange. Second, to send email to a large group of people by putting all of them on bcc. I strongly recommend never using bcc any other way. If you want someone to know about an email you sent, send it and then forward it…

Some Things I Have Learned About Email

That second point is particularly important. When you send email to a group using the TO or CC line, then you’re not just emailing everyone. But you’ve given everyone on that list the addresses of everyone else on that list. Even if it’s a small list, those people may not want others to know they’re part of it. Or to give up their email address.

If you have a large list, then you’re asking for a reply-all nightmare. I’ve emailed groups of 500 people before using a series of BCC emails. If you don’t, and any of those people decide to reply-all, you’ve got an email going to 500 people every. single. time.

Please take me off this list.

Thanks

I’m not going to ever reply to an email with Thanks if it’s the end of the conversation. You don’t need another email to delete from me and it doesn’t add any value to our conversation.

I’ll email a response to any questions I am being asked, or if I need something and you reply you’ll do it. I’m not going to close the thread with a Thanks. I don’t see the point of it and it annoys me when people respond with their own Thanks.

Meeting Acceptances

By default, Outlook will send an email reply when you Accept a meeting. I always opt to not send the reply back. If I decline, I respond with a reason in addition to the declined email. However, if I’m going to attend your meeting, I’m not having the system send an email. I feel about this the same way I feel about the Thanks email. It’s unnecessary.

This is a learned behavior from running a series of large meetings and training events where I find myself buried in emails. It’s no fun to return to an inbox overflowing with over 100 meeting acceptance emails. It serves no purpose other than to generate another email.

Less Email

The goal of my last two rules is to make less email. When I reply to an email, I try to be brief and consider the recipient’s time. In the same way, I don’t generate more email for them to sort through. Though many people’s inboxes have unread counts in the thousands partly because of emails like this.

I do my part to send less email and generate less email overall. I don’t see the point in adding to the growing pile of unread messages. Especially if they say “Thanks” or “I’ve accepted your meeting request.”

All Email Is Public

I don’t mean public in that hackers are going to release it, or it’s going to fall into the wrong hands. I mean people will forward email to anyone for any reason without a second thought.

If I write a reply to a question someone asks me, I assume it’s going to be forwarded in its entirety to the third-party who asked the question.

A bonus tech worker tip: Never put any note in a ticket or email you would not want the customer to read.

Nothing about email is private. I’ve had entire ticket histories emailed to customers. I’ve had co-workers and managers send along an entire conversation just the two of us were having to a larger group. The truth is you never know just how far and wide your email may go. Treat it as if it will be read by the person you least wish would read it. That way, when they do, you won’t have anything to apologize for.

Make Office 365 stop replying all by default

By Carl

On September 25, 2015

In Briefs

Office 365 email accounts will default to reply all when replying to a message instead of replying to the sender only.

This is a bad practice, especially since it’s not the expected behavior of an email client. When you receive an email, the default has always been to reply to the sender only.

I’ve made a short screen cast showing how to change this behavior.

Set Office 365 to reply by default

Click the Gear icon in the upper right corner.
Click Options (Do not click Office 365 Settings.)
Click Reply settings in the menu on the left. It’s the second-to-last option under Mail.
Click the option next to Reply.
Click Save. If you don’t click Save, it won’t take effect.
Click the <– Options link at the top of the left-side menu.

Now you can reply to emails as you always have. And Reply All is still accessible from the drop-down menu in the message.

On Ending the Tyranny of 24/7 Email

By Carl

On August 29, 2014

In Observations

End the Tyranny of 24/7 Email

Why would less email mean better productivity? Because, as Ms. Deal found in her research, endless email is an enabler. It often masks terrible management practices.

When employees shoot out a fusillade of miniature questions via email, or “cc” every team member about each niggling little decision, it’s because they don’t feel confident to make a decision on their own. Often, Ms. Deal found, they’re worried about getting in trouble or downsized if they mess up.

When I am not at work, I do not check work email. I do not think about work email. I do not consider what could be going on in work email.

If it’s in email, it is inherently unimportant.

If something urgent were happening, I would receive a phone call. No phone call. No urgency.

In contrast, when employees are actually empowered, they make more judgment calls on their own. They also start using phone calls and face-to-face chats to resolve issues quickly, so they don’t metastasize into email threads the length of “War and Peace.”

See? Face-to-face meetings or phone calls are for important things. Email is for ass-covering and uncertainty.

These changes can’t happen through personal behavior: The policy needs to come from the top. (If your boss regularly emails you a high-priority question at 11 p.m., the real message is, “At our company, we do email at midnight.”)

This is another important point. The example is set from the top-down. If your manager and his manager and his manager all email all night long. That’s the message. I keep my work email habits to myself mostly because people are aghast when I tell them I don’t check it outside of work.

But when I ask them how often they’ve had something in email that absolutely could not wait until they were back in the office?

Very rarely do they have any examples. And the ones they do offer were accompanied by a phone call. This Labor Day let’s think about how we labor. We give all of our time to work in exchange for what?

More work. You won’t ever get ahead. The harder you work and the more time you pour into your work and email, the more you’re rewarded with more work to do.

Stand with me. Hold the line. Do not check work email outside of work.