As I’m scanning I usually do a couple of things to make legitimate messages pop-out a little bit from the rest of the junk in the folders. I’ll sort by name first and quickly delete patterns of emails, then switch to sorting by subject and do the same thing. I’ve found by doing this I can usually eliminate more than 50% of my junk mail quickly. Today I started with 286 messages and after these two steps I had it down to about 120 messages left.

Looking at subject lines closer I began to ask myself exactly who’s actually looking and clicking on this stuff? That’s how it works right? If people weren’t clicking on the messages and the links included in them, spammers wouldn’t be doing it right?

Spelling mistakes, lewd subject lines, false hopes, Nigerian money schemes, and now the ever popular Acai berry. Who’s clicking on this stuff? If you’re reading this and you are, STOP IT!

Post from: EveryJoe

Is Spam Really Working… It must be right?

Reverse Your Email Composition Sequence

In the standard model we normally write emails in this order.

1. Input recipients
2. Write subject
3. Write body of message
4. Attach files

Robby Slaughter, the presenter of the summit shared his preferred method of reversing this process flow and the reasons behind each. I’m significantly paraphrasing but this is the basic premise.

1. Attach files – how many times have you sent an email and forgotten to attach the files? Attaching the files first also reinforces the purpose of the email which will be important in the following steps.
2. Write Body – The body of the message in this case with attached files should be a simple statement of what action you would like the recipient to take on the attached files. Should they review them, are they to be printed for the upcoming seminar? State specifically what you want the reader to do in your email.
3. Write Subject – Write the subject after the body because it should be a simple, stripped-down restatement of the body of the message. Clear and concise with key words at the beginning of the subject.
4. Select Recipients – Choosing the recipients last performs a couple of helpful functions. First, if an email doesn’t have a recipient specified, you can’t accidentally send the email without the attachments or pausing long enough to make sure you actually want to hit “Send” on that email laced with your frustrations. Secondly, if you wait till the end you can further clarify exactly who needs to be included based on the actions and requested tasks specified in the email.

What processes do you use to stay on top of your email or to more effectively manage your email productivity?

Post from: EveryJoe

Reversing Your Email Composition

Image: Capture from email from eWeek

Hopefully they’ll do what they say they’re going to do and cancel my subscription. It’s not that it’s a bad email newsletter, just trying to adjust and prioritize what’s getting put into my Inbox on a regular basis.

What’s been your experiences with trying to unsubscribe from email subscriptions from what are legitimate and mainstream technology companies?

Post from: EveryJoe

Cancel my eWeek Subscription? Yes, Please!

Recently while at a client where I could not get POP3 email to send or receive with my settings behind their firewall I decided to try Gmail’s hand at accessing and sending e-mail from my other business POP3 accounts with the Gmail interface.

Things were easy to setup and manage from within the interface. That was expected, as for the most part getting things working with Google apps is usually not too major of an undertaking.

Image: Snagit from Gmail Accounts Setup

The challenge though is when I’m no longer onsite with that particular client. Gmail keeps checking those accounts for mail instead of just letting me handle it through Outlook 2007. Normally that wouldn’t be that big of a deal because I configured Gmail to leave copies of the mail on the server, so I’m not missing it from Outlook. I’m just having to manage the mail twice now to delete the copy in Gmail.

What I’d really like to be able to do is to “inactivate” those accounts in my Gmail interface without having to delete them completely. No such luck though. As long as the accounts are loaded in Gmail, they will continue to get checked for new email. For that reason I’ve just deleted them and will manage accessing those accounts via their independent webmail sites.

It sure would have been handy though to just keep using Gmail to consolidate all that information and communication. Not quite ready for that though as it relates to my needs from a business stand point.

Post from: EveryJoe

Grabbing POP3 Mail w/ Gmail

The other nice thing they’ve added is the ability to immediately show LinkedIn profile information for anyone you receive an e-mail from. VERY NICE! I’ve already used it to connect with a few more people on the LinkedIn site that I didn’t realize were users.

One more feature worth mentioning is that you can now specifically tell Xobni what folders and files to keep under review for searching purposes later.

There you go, in case you hadn’t heard enough from me about Xobni, now there’s more. I’ve got a number invites available if you’re interested. Just let me know in the comments and I’ll send an email to the e-mail address you use for your comment.

Post from: EveryJoe

Xobni Now Faster and Integrates with LinkedIn

The service is now out of private beta and anyone can download and install it to see for themselves.

I’ve heard some people say that Outlook slowed down tremendously after they installed it, but I haven’t noticed anything like that up until this point during my usage of the application.

With the new public release they’ve also made just some slight appearance modifications to the Xobni information pane.

I don’t think the search function needed to be made quite so prominent in the new, updated user-interface design. Maybe that’s because I’ve not been a big user of the general search features. I more regularly use the network, conversations and files information.

Xobni had some news coverage in the New York Times as well if you’re interested in what some other people besides myself think about the product.

In the article, Jeff Bonforte, expressed interest and goals in expanding the reach of Xobni into other e-mail and communication clients:

Xobni now has ambitions that extend well beyond Microsoft Outlook. Jeff Bonforte, a 35-year-old former Yahoo vice president, joined Xobni as chief executive in February. He plans to expand Xobni’s reach to various e-mail programs, like the popular Web-based services Yahoo Mail, Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Hotmail as well as social networks like Facebook and Linkedin.

That would be pretty slick to be able to type in a name in Xobni and it be able to read my e-mail for that contact’s information regardless of which one of my e-mail accounts I had been communicating with the individual.

The only problem I can see is I don’t keep my e-mail around for very long in other e-mail clients. So, not sure if Xobni would keep a history of messages that I’ve already deleted from my system. Not sure how they would.

Post from: EveryJoe

Xobni Goes Public and New Design