User login
Courtesy navigation
Search
Blog posts tagged email
Email is dead: long live instant messaging
May 17, 2012
When I tell people that email won’t be around in five years’ time, they look at me like I’m mad. It’s true though – email hasn’t changed for 20 years, and we all know what happens to technology that doesn’t change. It dies.
Email is as secret as Twitter
At a presentation I did recently, I told people email wasn’t secure. To illustrate this point, I explained that information sent by email is as open as your Twitter stream, as long as you know where to look for it.
Some members of the audience looked at me in shock, admitting to sending all sorts of sensitive data via good old Microsoft Outlook.
I went on to explain that instant messaging is the future for corporate communications. I don’t care if you don’t believe me. It’s true and now I’ll explain why.
Twenty years ago people did business over the phone. When you needed something from someone, you picked the phone up or went to their desk, had a conversation and got what you needed.
Email changed all that. We became accustomed to sending a request for information, waiting for a reply, replying to the reply, waiting for another reply … and so on. A conversation that could have taken a few minutes turns into a four-hour email trail.
The only positive aspect is that email gives us an audit trail. I’m not sure about you but to me that feels like a backwards step. Of course, we didn’t see it like that at the time.
Real-time communication is changing
Well, the world of real time communication is changing and instant messaging is the new black, if you’ll excuse the cliché. Now when I want to discuss a subject I can go into my copy of Outlook and click ‘reply with IM’:
This instantly opens a text, voice or even video conversation with recipient. You can discuss the subject and get an outcome - and best of all the entire chat is recorded in Outlook so you can check what you actually said. You can even share data directly from Microsoft Word or Excel using the share button in the review tab.
Of course, these functions aren’t only available in Microsoft Outlook. There are plenty of other services that do similar things, including free ones like Skype. So, next time you’re tempted to hit ‘reply all’, why not try instant messaging instead?
- Five email blunders you really don’t want to make
- Ten ways to use email effectively
- Five free conferencing tools
Lee Wrall is founder and MD of Everything Tech, an IT support and service provider based in Manchester.
Friday Donut tip: stop email ping-pong games dead
May 11, 2012
Every Friday afternoon we bring you a great business IT tip. From nuggets that make repetitive tasks easier to simple ways to banish business tech annoyances, we’re here to help.
If there’s something you’d like our help with, send an email to info@itdonut.co.uk or just leave a comment on this post. We’ll try and cover it in a future IT Donut tip.
Stop playing email ping-pong!
Every round of email ping-pong puts another message in your inbox for you to deal with. If you’re trying to put a stop to email overload, it’s completely counterproductive.
Here are three tips to help you avoid getting lost in a pointless game of email ping-pong:
- Think in fives. Five sentences, five questions, five lines long. If you’re trying to send emails that are effective and to the point, think five.
- Include a clear action statement. If you’re trying to accomplish something with your email, be clear and specific about what you want the recipient to do. Don’t leave them room to come back with questions.
- Tell them you don’t want a reply. It’s easy to get trapped in a repetitive loop of ‘thank yous’. Draw a line by telling recipients they don’t need to bother replying. You can even put NRN (‘no reply necessary’) in the subject line.
Do you have a strategy to reduce the amount of email in your inbox? Leave a comment and share it with us.
- Keep things secure when you work remotely
- Control what happens when you shut your laptop lid
- Open web and file addresses faster
Monica Seeley is an email and productivity expert who runs Mesmo. Learn more about email overload and email etiquette on her website.
Friday Donut tip: how to delay emails in Outlook
March 15, 2012
Every Friday afternoon we bring you a great business IT tip. From nuggets that make repetitive tasks easier to simple ways to banish business tech annoyances, we’re here to help.
If there’s something you’d like our help with, send an email to info@itdonut.co.uk or just leave a comment on this post. We’ll try and cover it in a future IT Donut tip.
Ever hit ‘send’ in Outlook, then regretted it?
What is it about making mistakes with emails? You can check your message ten times, but the second after you hit ‘send’ is always when you realise you’ve forgotten a vital piece of information, said something you wish you hadn’t … or even sent the email to the wrong person altogether.
If you use Microsoft Outlook and get carried away bashing at the keyboard, a misplaced tap on CTRL and Enter will even send your half-finished email. I know – I did it many times before I got wise to this trick.
Delay your emails by a minute or two
If you use Microsoft Outlook, it’s easy to delay the sending of every email by a minute or two, so you have time to cancel it if you’ve made a mistake or hit ‘send’ by accident.
Here’s how. These instructions assume you’re using the latest version of Microsoft Outlook, although they should be similar in older versions too.
- With Outlook open, click the File tab
- Click Manage Rules & Alerts
(If you can’t find this option, click the Tools menu, then select Rules and Alerts.) - A box should appear. Make sure the E-mail Rules tab is selected, then click New Rule
- Another window should open. This is the Rules Wizard, which helps you set up rules for how Outlook should handle your email.
- Look for the Start from a blank rule heading, click Apply rule on messages I send and then click the Next button.
- The next window will ask you to Select conditions. Don’t select anything – just click Next.
- A box may appear asking if you’re sure you want to apply the rule to all messages. If you see it, click Yes.
- On the next screen, check the box beside Defer delivery by a number of minutes.
- You’ll see some text appear in the step 2 box. Click a number of, which should be blue and underlined.
- You can now set how many minutes to delay emails by. Two minutes gives you plenty of time to cancel an email, so type 2 into the box, click OK and then click Next.
- The next screen will ask you to set any exceptions. Let’s assume you want to delay all emails by a couple of minutes, so ignore this screen and just click Next.
- Finally, type a name for your rule into the box (it can be anything) and click Finish.
That’s it – next time you hit Send, Outlook won’t send your email straight away. It’ll sit in your Outbox for two minutes. If you suddenly realise you’ve made a mistake, just go to your outbox and open the message to edit it.
Has our tip saved your bacon? Any other email delay advice you want to share? Just leave a comment to let us know.
Now is the time to clean up your inbox
January 23, 2012
According to research, 2.8 million emails per second were sent in 2010. Given that incredible figure (I wonder who counted them all), it’s no surprise that email overload is an ever-growing problem.
You probably know the feeling. You start work in the morning by opening your email. It takes an hour – or more – to deal with all the queries in your inbox. And then you seem to spend most of the rest of the day replying to replies to the email you sent first thing. Confusing, isn’t it?
Your inbox is a source of stress
My own data indicates that almost half of us in the UK receive 50 – 70 emails a day. Some people receive 180 or even more! For all the noise about social media becoming the communications channel of choice, the numbers show that business email isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Yet most of us need less than half of the email we receive. Just think of all the pointless one-line replies, the emails you were copied in on out of politeness and, of course, the newsletters, the special offers, the junk, the spam you have no intention of reading but which still takes time and effort to sort through and delete.
Email overload takes up people’s time and causes stress. But there’s another reason businesses need to address this problem: money.
The bottom line to email overload
On average, we each lose an hour a day because of ineffective email use. At an hourly cost of £20, that’s about £4,200 of lost productivity for every single person a year. Does your business really need that in the current economic climate?
Many companies are waking up to this. Volkswagen has taken an extreme route, deciding that the best way to give its people some respite is to block out-of-hours email altogether. Fine, but doesn’t that just move the problem to the next morning rather than solving it completely?
You can do a lot with better planning. Cut down on the number of unnecessary emails you send and be realistic about replying. Take a stand against the culture of replying instantly to everything and instead develop a system to help you identify which emails are important, which can wait, and which should go straight in the bin.
Clean out your inbox next week
Together, we can put an end to email overload. And the work starts right there, in the folder marked ‘inbox’. If you’re willing to give it a go, I can help: my company, Mesmo, is running Clean Out Your Inbox Week – and it starts today!
Together with fellow email expert Marsha Egan I’ll be offering hints, tips and online tools to help you get on top of your email. We’ll explain how to get rid of email noise, what to do to prioritise emails and why email etiquette matters.
It’s completely free and you might even get the chance to win a prize! To get more information and take part, head over to my blog.
Monica Seeley is an email and productivity expert who runs Mesmo. Learn more about email overload and email etiquette on her website.
Switching off from email in the always-on world
June 16, 2011
Put the smart phone away! (Image: Gulltaggen on Flickr)
With laptops, smartphones and other mobile devices, your email is always with you - wherever you are. So how can you get away from it without appearing rude to people who expect an instant response? Is it even realistic to always be available?
It's interesting that most surveys, including my own, show that we stay connected not so much because people expect us to be available but because we think they expect us to be available. That reflects either our inability to switch off and delegate, or an equally worrying 'email addiction'.
To check your level of email addiction use my email addiction tool.
The key to surviving in this 24/7/365 world of business is to manage people's expectations. Here are five ways to take time off from email:
- Check your level of email addiction to make sure your reluctance to switch off is not driven primarily by your own assumptions rather than other people's expectations. More on how to deal with addiction in a future column.
- Use your out of office message no matter whether you're away on business or holiday. Set a safe, simple message saying you are out of the office with limited email access. Offer a point of contact for urgent matters and a date when you will reply. Make this the day after you actually get back, so you have time to catch up.
- Ask someone else to manage your email whilst you take a break. If you're a one-person business or don't have someone you can ask, consider using a virtual PA service.
- Lock your smart phone away and take a conventional mobile phone with you which only handles voice and text messages.
- If you do take a smart phone or laptop with you, only check your email once or twice a day - preferably at the end of the day. At all other times, shut down your email software and turn new message notifications off.
We all like to think we are indispensible but at the end of the day most of us need time to recharge our batteries and switch off. Staying switched on around the clock has been shown to reduce our overall effectiveness - and never mind the health implications!
Be honest. Ask yourself if there's ever been an email which would cause a disaster if you didn't deal with it immediately. For most of us, the answer is no. And that means there are alternatives to always being connected.
For more ways to take time out without jeopardising your business and professional image either go to one of Dr Monica Seeley’s ninety minute Brilliant Email Master Classes or get a copy of her latest book, ‘Brilliant Email: How to improve productivity and save time’.
2011: the year of the data breach?
April 08, 2011
Are you taking care of data properly? (Image: Flickr user dawnzy58 under Creative Commons.)
If the first months of 2011 are anything to go by, this could be the year of the data breach. It almost seems like companies are falling over each other to give away information about their customers.
Here are three high-profile data breaches that have hit the headlines in the last month alone.
While you read about them, think about how many smaller incidents may go unreported or even undetected. Then stop to consider if your business does enough to safeguard its customer data.
1. The Epsilon effect
Epsilon runs huge email marketing operations for clients like Citibank and Marks & Spencer, yet still managed to have millions of customer email addresses stolen when someone got into the company's systems without authorisation.
What we can learn: the information stolen during this breach belonged to Epsilon's clients, many of whom have since warned customers that they may receive more spam as a result.
So, if your business shares data for marketing purposes or joint ventures, make sure you only work with partners you trust, and ask searching questions to find out how they protect the data. Get a strong contract in place that - if possible - places financial liability for data breaches on their shoulders.
2. Don't Play with your data
Hugely-successful Jersey-based online retailer Play.com suffered embarrassment last month when users reported receiving junk email to addresses they'd only ever used on the site. It soon emerged that a company responsible for some of Play.com's marketing communications had suffered a breach.
What we can learn: spotted the pattern yet? Just as with the Epsilon breach, although Play.com customers were affected, the leak actually occurred at another company.
However, Play.com's subsequent customer communications are an exercise in good damage limitation. They apologised quickly, explained what went wrong and described the possible consequences for customers.
3. Losing data the old-fashioned way
York City Council adequately demonstrated that you can lose data without turning to high-tech hackers. All you have to do is print it out and then send it to the wrong place. The council was criticised this week for accidentally posting personal information to a third-party.
What we can learn: hard copies can cause problems too, especially when left lying around. If you have to print out sensitive information, grab it from the printer quickly, then keep it somewhere it can't get mixed up with other paperwork. Once you're done with it, shred it.
Good email etiquette costs nothing and is worth a lot
February 28, 2011
Have you ever received no reply to an email? Is it down to email overload, arrogance or plain bad manners?
There is no need to say thank for each and every email you receive. However there is a time a place when a simple response is needed.
No reply, no relationship
Recently a well-established trade magazine asked for volunteers to write expert online columns. They never either acknowledged or replied to my email. Is this because they feel no need to demonstrate the basic simple courtesy just blogged by Ted Coine or is the requesting editor's email inbox so overstuffed they don't read half their emails?
Worst of all, is it old guard establishment arrogance?
No excuse for bad manners
Compare this experience with a smaller, newer website which made the same request and have taken the time to reply and nurture our relationship. They've even created a learning experience for me as an added bonus.
It’s a competitive market no matter what your business, but especially for online content. Just look at AOL’s takeover of the Huffington Post. All email software lets you send automatic responses and create template emails to use to say ‘thanks but the post has been filled’. There is no excuse for bad manners.
What do you think? Who would you rather give your business to?
Image from Flickr user CarbonNYC under a Creative Commons licence.
Small business technology advice, tools and resources | IT Donut
Copyright © 2010-2012
