The Trouble with Email

When I was first introduced to email, I thought it was the coolest thing ever! What a great way to communicate with people anywhere and anytime, with no worries about long distance charges or whether the person was available at that moment!

Of course, as more and more people started using it for more and more things, the volume of messages escalated to the point where it’s almost out of control.

Let’s start with well meaning friends who forward every joke or affirmation that lands in their inbox. I like a smile as much as the next person, but I don’t have time to read 10 or 20 per day. Even though I delete many of them without reading them, it still takes time to download them and for me to decide how to handle them.

Next on the list is business contacts who think that, because they met you at a networking event or communicated with you online, it’s okay to send you their newsletter and other marketing pitches. That’s not only rude, it’s against the law, and it’s really annoying. I have well over 1000 contacts, and if every one of them emailed me even once a month, it would take me hours to deal with it. I usually ask to be removed from the distribution list, but that takes time too. I understand that they are trying to grow their business and that all the marketing experts are encouraging them to “build their lists” but this is not the way to go about it. Sending stuff to people who don’t want to receive it is unlikely to get you business either directly or in the form of referrals, in my opinion.

Lastly there are the real spammers. You know who they are. They send you a steady flood of offers for everything from SEO services to Viagra, and they often have strange email addresses that no human would ever choose. Except of course when they make it look like it’s come from YOUR email address – those are the worst ones of all. All it takes is a few people to flag it as spam, and the next thing you know, your contacts stop receiving your emails. And that is an even bigger challenge!

You can use spam filters, blockers and automated rules to manage the incoming mail, but what can you do if your messages aren’t getting through? Just this week I received two replies from people I’d emailed; both were people I’d corresponded with in the past. One apologized for taking so long to answer (2½ weeks after I’d emailed him), explaining that my message was caught in his spam filter. The other didn’t mention it, but I could see from the subject line that when she received my email it was flagged with [SpamGuard:####].

Obviously, both of those messages were read by the recipients, but it makes me wonder how many are blocked or filtered out. It has me wondering about setting up a new email address, but I don’t know whether it’s my domain name that’s the problem, or just my own email address. And what about all the people who have already whitelisted my address? If I use a new one, am I going to face the same problems, or maybe worse?

For now, the easiest solution seems to be to request a Read Receipt on important messages, and to flag for follow-up any email where I’m expecting a reply. Of course, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to follow up by email, in case that message doesn’t go through either! At that point I’ll need to try an alternate means of communication, such as a phone call, or maybe Facebook or Twitter. I’ve had a few people bypass email altogether and contact me via a direct message through Facebook or Twitter. That works for me, except that when I’m exceptionally busy, I might not visit those sites for a few days, whereas I check my email daily. Also, a lot of Twitter users are complaining that they receive so many direct messages that it has also become a problem, although I haven’t experienced that yet (maybe because I’ve very selective about who I follow and don’t automatically refollow those who follow me, but now I’m getting way off topic).

What do you do to ensure that people receive your messages?