There's so much spam email flying around it's incredible. It's kind of sad and disappointing to watch email have descended so far, but I get it. It's easy to automate and easy to flood people with useless information trying to part their dollars from them.
Distractions, grabbing that attention, pulling us away from what we thought we were going to go and do or look at or read.
I remember I had a manager at work who was big on the military method of subject lines. Every subject line had to have a prefix in front of it followed by a colon and he wanted only four prefixes. INFO, COORD, ACTION, and a couple of others that I don't even remember.
What was funny is I had read articles about that method years before. I really liked r concept but nobody used it outside of the military and I didn't get very many military emails so I didn't know if they even used it. But he told us to go forth and use it.
Nobody else on the team did except for me. I loved it. Now I had a way to tell people very clearly about my email. This email is just information. This email is calling for some sort of action. This email is coordinating something with you.
It didn't go over very well when I started sending the manager emails with those prefixes. He did not like being told he needed to take action on something. But I was right and he did.
I have a friend who, when things are leading up to a big event, he starts putting "please read" as the prefix to his email subject. The first couple that I got I just deleted. I finally opened one up and it really didn't have anything that pertained to me in it. I told my wife this guy needs to understand. I automatically filter anything that says "please read" as nothing I need to read.
She and I talked about it. She didn't understand. So I told her if someone has to beg me to read their email then all of their other emails I don't have to read. I probably don't have to read this one either.
Clogging the system with useless information. What's funny is another person on the same staff that my friend is on sends out very meaningful emails full of information about the entire year of events. Not just tidbits of information shared one at a time with a subject line of please read.
One benefit is any email that starts with "please read" usually gets filtered by my systems and put in a folder where I never see it.
But anything that starts with INFO: or COORD: or ACTION: ends up marked as important and right in front of me.
Hilarious.
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