Seven Ways to Make Sure No One Reads Your E-Mail
Do
you wonder how many people are actually reading the e-mail you send?
It may be less than you think. The
Diva has 7 reasons why your email could end up in the "trash" folder
without you ever knowing. You may
find that these warnings are compilations of articles in previous Cyber Pearls. Yes, they are that important.
Take heed to these warnings...there is still time to save your e-mail
reputation.
I
have put them in the form of questions. Are
your friends asking themselves these questions when they read your e-mail.
7. What Are You Talking About?
When
you talk to your friends do you do so without a topic?
Okay, then why start an electronic conversation off without a hint
regarding its content? It is like
talking about something in the middle of the conversation.
No beginning, no warning. In
your subject headings, help me out!
Let me know what to expect when I read your mail. I may need to set it aside for later or read it right away.
When you talk to your friends do you do so without a topic? Okay, then why start an electronic conversation off without a hint regarding its content? It is like talking about something in the middle of the conversation. No beginning, no warning. In your subject headings, help me out! Let me know what to expect when i read your mail. I may need to set it aside for later or read right away.
6. Who Are All These People?
One
of the most tiresome activities thousands of business people engage in is
sending e-mail poetry, humor or attachments that was created by a friend of a
friend of a friend of the guy down the hall. The headers and footers on these
monsters become endlessly long. Wait,
you don't know what I mean. Well,
have you ever had to hit the "page down" key more than four times in
order to read the original message? Okay,
all that gibberish was the headers and footers from the original senders.
Most
messages that are sent with several pages of email address and personal notes
attached to the beginning are most likely to be deleted before the original
message can be found. Who has time
to "find" a message inside of a message? It's like looking for a needle in a hay stack. Besides these
messages with all their extra baggage clog up my system and slow down the
reading of important e-mail.
You
are probably thinking, "I send
you those e-mail because I am thinking about you." Okay, that is fair.
But prior to the Internet when you thought of me did you send me used
cards- that had been sent to you? Or
would you call all your friends in your phone book at work just to tell them a
joke?
If
you are sending more than three forwarded messages to more than ten people a
week, you need to stop..... Also,
if you forward an e-mail that says "send this back to me" you are
going to be without friends very soon.
Don't
encourage this lazy form of communication. Write your own e-mails or at least
delete the unnecessary headers before you send it. (The copy and paste functions work wonders when you are
trying to keep an email short.)
Tell
your friends, too.
5. Why Must You Be the Hero?
Are
you a Cyber Warrior? Do you forward
warnings and petitions to all the people in your address book just like the
e-mail that your friend sent you instructed you to do?
Fake
warnings and petitions are frequently used by spammers and cyberstalkers to
obtain a list of possible targets. Ever wonder how those spammers got your
address? Just look at the header of one of these forwarded messages and see all
the addresses there. Take a petition where well-meaning people attach their
names and home towns, and you may be giving a cyberstalker a powerful weapon.
Never attach personal information to a message that may end up in a stranger's
hands. Scary, hunh?
Murphy's
Law of E-Mail: Any warning message
that elicits fear, anger,sympathy, or distrust, is most likely a hoax (or, at
the very least, very one-sided). If you want news in an electronic format then
go to the website of your local newspaper.
The newspaper is generally attempting to provide unbiased reports of the
facts.
Most
hoaxes are spread by people with good intentions. There are thousands of new
users on the 'net everyday and hoaxters count on the naiveté and good
intentions of these "newbies" to spread their misinformation for them.
If you consider yourself new or inexperienced on the 'net, please seek out
someone you know that is experienced to help you determine if an e-mail message
you've received is true. Once
you get the hang of e-mail you can help other newbies by educating them on how
to recognize a hoax.
4. Didn't You Know that E-Mail is Forever?
E-mail is non-retractable. Once you hit the "send" button on a message, there's no turning back. I saw an E-mail whose subject read "Retract-Last Message." The sender had mailed a position announcement before approval. Unfortunately the original e-mail had been sent to over a 1000 people in an instant and then well-meaning friends forwarded the messages to their unemployed friends and other colleagues. Those friends sent the message to other friends, and so on. If you multiply exponentially, it is possible that 100,000 copies of the job announcement were circulating. It can take just a couple of hours for a message to get to 6 generations. Once you send it, there's no way to know who else gets it, unless you personally contact all or your friends, and your friends' friends, etc. And even they probably won't remember to whom they sent it.
3. Do You Believe Everything You Read?
E-mail is not an information tool. E-mail was designed to be a
communications tool for brief correspondence and coordination. It is not a news
medium and should never be used to distribute information, alerts or warnings.
Traditional media (television news, news radio, newspaper) are, to differing
degrees, valid (the source traceable and verifiable) and reliable (The information
stays the same over time). E-mail is neither valid nor reliable.
Let's keep this in perspective. Remember the old party game where you line up all the guests and have the first guest whisper a sentence to the person on their right, then that person repeats it to the one on his right, and you see what amusing things happened to the sentence by the time it reaches the end? Well, e-mail is just like that. Everyone who receives a message is free to alter it in any way they want before they send it out. So, as an information dissemination tool, it is highly unreliable. Basically, every e-mail is a rumor waiting to be started.
2. Do You Have to Shout?
Thou shalt never send e-mail when furious or
exhausted.
It's amazing how many people send e-mail that they live to regret. The old rule about writing letters that
your great-grandmother knew still holds true for e-mail: write it down, save it, look at it tomorrow. Does it still
look as clever or important as it did the night before?
You may decide not to send it at all.
The corporate world has thoroughly absorbed the
strange lesson that it's good in most cases to
overcommunicate. E-mail encourages this dangerous
fallacy because of its ease of use. Fight this tendency
by deciding to ignore all but the most essential
information about time-sensitive events, activities, and
plans. The truth is that all business communications
should be action-centered. If a communication doesn't
promise to lead to an action, consider not reading it or
sending it. E-mail should be subjected to the same
test.
It's best for short, informal messages that need to be both written and read. That's important, and people forget it constantly: don't say anything in an e-mail that you wouldn't want to commit to writing. Permanently. You may delete it, but if it makes someone else laugh or cry, or become furious, it will be saved. And read.
Again and again. By people who say, “How could
anyone have been so stupid as to write that?” If you find yourself worrying
excessively over what to say in an e-mail, maybe you
should call. Maybe you should write a letter — later,
when you're calm. Maybe you should walk down the
hall and talk to the person. Maybe, just maybe, you
shouldn't even respond at all.
AND THE NUMBER ONE QUESTION PEOPLE ASK BEFORE THEY DELETE YOUR E-MAIL
1. You Talkin' To Me?
When you're trying
to persuade someone to do something, or someone wants to persuade you, there is
no substitute for a face-to-face meeting.
Never
reprimand, reward, or fire someone who reports to you via e-mail.
There's
a special circle of hell awaiting those who do. We owe it to our humanity to
perform these obligations, whether difficult or easy, in person.
Besides,
this type of communication is hardly private.
The same goes for your friendships. I may be a Diva, but I had to learn about the e-mail rules myself. Once, I sent a flame to an old friend who never responded in-kind. Instead, he waited UNITL till he saw me and read me the riot act for sending such a mean e-mail and addressed the real issue. I really appreciated that. I have since been on the receiving end of flames and I have used the lesson that I have learned.
April Cyber Pearl
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