June 9, 2008
Good email habits - and, why do some bad email habits die out?
Seth Godin’s email checklist:
1 Is it going to just one person? (If yes, jump to #10)
2 Since it’s going to a group, have I thought about who is on my list?
3 Are they blind copied?
4 Did every person on the list really and truly opt in? Not like sort of, but really ask for it?
5 So that means that if I didn’t send it to them, they’d complain about not getting it?
6 See #5. If they wouldn’t complain, take them off!
7 That means, for example, that sending bulk email to a list of bloggers just cause they have blogs is not okay.
…
10 Have I corresponded with this person before?
11 Really? They’ve written back? (if no, reconsider email)…
The list goes on to 36 and almost all of the advice looks good to me.
Beyond the practicality of the checklist, it raised a question in my mind. Some of Seth’s advice was routinely flouted in the early days of mass email (I’m thinking 1995-1999). For instance, many people forwarded jokes and virus warnings. These days they are rare, especially as a proportion of all the email that is sent. Other advice (such as, “don’t admonish people not to print this email”) would have been superfluous ten years ago and is now very widely ignored.
So my question is, what determines why some bad email habits die out and others thrive and multiply? Or is this just the unpredictable outcome of a mysterious process of evolution?
According to the EU’s internet security agency, 90% of e-mails in circulation are still spam/viruses - what has changed are the filters used by ISPs to stop them arriving in our inboxes…
…perhaps it’s just technology rather than behaviour.
Posted by: David | June 10th, 2008 at 9:20 am | Report this commentI use email to communicate with people I actually like (or at least with whom I want to maintain a professional or commercial relationship), so most of the advice is irrelevant or wrong (points 3-8, 10-12, 25, 27-28, 36). 14 is highly dubious, since some recipients just like email, even if your end of it would work better by phone.
If marketers genuinely wanted their marketing to be “opt-in”, then these days it needn’t be an email, it could be an RSS feed, or Twitter, or a podcast, or something. There’s no way rule 4 will ever be whole-heartedly followed by those still using bulk email for marketing or advertising.
For purposes other than marketing, the rules could largely be replaced with, “for each person on the recipient list, how do you estimate their chances of finding this email boring or annoying? Unless very low, take them off”.
People forwarding jokes and virus warnings are the result of different ideas of etiquette (i.e. common rules of conduct to avoid boring or annoying other people). That’s why most individuals get better at it over time, as they get feedback from their recipients and as more people use email and contribute to expectations.
The faults of commercial mass mailers are the result of an intractable clash of interests (the sender makes money from a minority of recipients, and externalises the time cost to the majority). These individuals won’t improve their behaviour solely as a result of people like Seth describing good practice: somehow they must also stop making money by behaving badly. That means recipients taking collective action, either in the form of negative publicity and “brand hurt” for those who don’t follow good practice, enforcing CAN-SPAM, or whatever.
Posted by: SteveJ | June 11th, 2008 at 11:37 am | Report this comment