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www.mybaycity.com September 2, 2005
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YOU'VE GOT MAIL!

And you may have missed it...

September 2, 2005       Leave a Comment
By: Stephen Kent

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You sent me an e-mail?
I didn't get it.


Or maybe it did pass through my in-box, along with a ba-jillion pieces of junk, and I just missed it.

You know the problem. We all have it. E-mail is being overwhelmed by spam and junk mail. As soon as your e-mail address has been in use for a few months you can be sure that all the spammers will know it and they all have important information to send you!

In my case I've been using e-mail since the beginning. My address is very well known because my primary account has never changed. I'd like to change it, but it's just not practical. I belong to many legitimate e-mail groups and it would be a real pain to try to give everyone a new address.

So my address is well known which means I get tons of spam (an average of 18 per hour) and I have to deal with it.

There are many strategies for handling spam. Filters are popular with some folks. You tell your e-mail program to route e-mail with certain subject lines, or mail from certain senders, to a special folder. Some companies filter all mail automatically.

The problem with filters is that they're hard to train and they're often easy to fool. You can say "drop all mail with SEX in the subject line". But the spammers learned that one long ago and they spell it s.e.x or cex or $ex.

The real problem with filters is not that they don't work, the problem is that they may work too well. They mayfilter out legitimate mail along with the junk if the sender uses a banned word. (Some people may not be able to read this article if their company filters web sites as well as e-mail. I used the s*x word and some companies will not allow this article to get through).

So I don't use automated filters. I look at everything and manually filter messages. With a couple of hundred messages a day, that means that I need to look quickly, which means that if something is not familiar it gets dumped quickly.

My personal filtering method is this. I start by sorting my e-mail so that unread messages all fall together in the top of my in-box. I click on the last good e-mail I've read then I shift click on the unread message at the top of the inbox. That selects the entire group of unread messages without opening any of them.

With the entire group of messages selected (turned blue on most Windows systems), I scan through the list. If I see a message that I want to keep I CTRL CLICK on that one. CTRL CLICK will de-select that one message, leaving all the others selected.

When I've looked at the entire list, the messages I want to keep are no longer selected (turned blue) but all the rest are selected. No messages have been opened. I tap the DELETE key (or click Delete) and all of the selected messages are sent straight to the trash folder.

OK, since I looked at every message, why did I miss the one you sent to me?

The answer is usually that I look at the subject first and your message may not have had a meaningful subject line, or a subject that would catch my attention. I received a legitimate e-mail today with the subject line "results". If Ihad not recognized the sender's name you can be sure that this e-mail would have gone straight to the dumpster!

The double whammy is when the subject line AND the sender are not familiar (or expected). I received several e-mails last week from "David" with the subject "Photos". Sorry... with that minimal information the e-mails went straight to the trash can. It turns out that this David was my brother and those were family photos. Too bad! Wish I had seen them.

I received another message today from "George". I know several "Georges", but I've never exchanged e-mail with any of them. In this case the subject line was very specificc and familiar and the message was not dropped.

So how do you make sure your message is read?

The vast majority of e-mail does get where it's going. If you want to be sure it's read, remember these simple tips:
  • Never leave the subject line blank!
  • Make the subject meaningful.
  • Include some significant key words in your subject.
  • If it's an important message, follow up to be sure it arrived and was read.
  • Request a "return receipt" and remember to watch for it. If the receipt doesn't come back, you should follow up.
  • Make sure your sender name actually identifies you. Include your first and last name.


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Stephen Kent

Steve Kent and his family have lived in Bay City for 40 years. He is VP of Technical Services at MMCC which produces MyBayCity.Com. Kent is active in many Bay City civic organizations.

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