Consider this response that I just received (identifying information removed) from a venture capitalist I emailed to discuss a new investment:
Thank you for your message. I apologize in advance if I do not reply.
I admit it. My email response rates are lame. I have tried many different approaches and techniques, yet I fail. I read everything that comes in, and I swear I have the most sincere intentions of replying to all of you. But, alas, I suck.
I am spending more time than ever on the road these days. Working on private equity stuff, coaching startups, giving speeches, training for an Ironman this summer, and luckily, taking some vacation. The result has me logging in to Gmail much less frequently, which may, in fact, be a healthy development.
Thankfully, what used to be well over a thousand inbound messages a day is slowing now that I am an increasingly irrelevant unemployed vagabond and no longer holding any [XXXXXX] pursestrings. Hopefully, these trends will continue until my mom and dad are the only folks left sending me notes, and even then mostly to give me updates on the weather back in [XXXXXX].
If you are curious about what I am up to, or looking for clues as to where you can physically stalk me, try my Twitter stream at:
twitter.com/[XXXXXX]. If we are actually buddies, friend me on Facebook. Though, be warned I log in over there even less frequently than here. If you are just looking for some cheap laughs, check out my brother [XXXXXX] ’s YouTube videos: http://youtube.com/[XXXXXX].In any event, I do look forward to being in touch with all of you. For now, thanks for your patience.
I remember the days before email. For those of you who don’t, you probably won’t understand how important the phone was as a communication device. If the phone rang, you answered it. Today, answering the phone when you are around other people is considered insulting.
The wonderful thing about email is that it’s asynchronous, meaning you don’t need to deal with it when it is first received. For me and many others, instant messaging is basically the same – I may respond to an IM instantly, or 24 hours later. The recipient generally understands that a response might be delayed, and doesn’t take offense. Facebook messages, Twitter and cell phone text messages all have similar benefits.
But the benefits of the new ways we communicate also mean there’s a lot more of it. The volume of communication requests for most people today are far, far beyond what they can handle. Few people today respond to every communication they receive. And an increasing number don’t even claim to be able to read every communication they receive, let alone respond.
I routinely declare email bankruptcy and simply delete my entire inbox. But even so, I currently have 2,433 unread emails in my inbox. Plus another 721 in my Facebook inbox. and about thirty skype message windows open with unanswered messages. It goes without saying, of course, that my cell phone voicemail box is also full (I like the fact that new messages can’t be left there, so I have little incentive to clear it out).
How do I deal with email now? I scan the from and subject fields for high payoff messages. People I know who don’t waste my time, or who I have a genuine friendship with. Or descriptive subject lines that help me understand that I should allot a minute or more of my life to opening it and reading it.
A journalist recently complained in a comment on another blog that he sent me multiple emails asking me for an interview, which went unanswered. But an email that he sent later suggesting some drama between AOL and Yahoo was instantly addressed. He was a little angry about that, which I understand. But what he doesn’t understand is that when I see an email asking for an interview, my brain says “this is not urgent, deal with it this evening,” whereas the possible breaking news has to be dealt with right away. Of course, when evening comes new fires have to be put out, which explains the 2,437 email messages in my inbox (it increased from two paragraphs ago in the time I took to write those words) that have to be responded to eventually.
The long term answer to all of this isn’t that people need to try harder to respond to communication requests. The long term answer is that someone needs to create a new technology that allows us to enjoy our life but not miss important messages. If I knew what that solution was, I’d quit this blog and go do it. Someone out there, though, has the beginning of an idea on how we can better manage our electronic communications. And he or she may someday turn that into a product and save us.
If you are the person with the idea to save us all, send me an email and tell me all about it. Actually, strike that. Drop by my house and tell me all about it. I don’t want your message to get lost in my inbox.
good point ! I just sent you one
arrington doesnt know shit about the music industry
In the two minutes it too me to read it, you changed 10% of the content in this post!
Very few people out of the technology sector have the problem.
Most big businessmen don’t have the problem.
It would have to be a feature that people like Michael Arrington pay for, which they’d probably be more than willing to do so.
So where do you live?
If you are the person with the idea to save us all, send me an email and tell me all about it. Actually, strike that. Drop by my house and tell me all about it. I don’t want your message to get lost in my inbox.
Now you will have a long line at your front door, same problem, no?
He’s making a point.
Grow up Anthony.
Y Combinator startup Chatterous will do this
his house is in atherton on a very “hot” street
Get an assistant! No amount of technology can, unfortunately, help you. People have limited attention and there’s a limited number of hours in a day. Nothing short of a full-blown AI will not be enough. So the solution is an old one… get an assistant! You can afford it, VC.
Amen.
One conceptual switch we need to flip is that designers of the next-gen communication clients should understand that not every incoming message will be read, or will want to be read. Right now we have just “spam” and “real mail”, but really we need much finer gradations than that with some intelligent prioritization.
“Mail you must read and respond to this instant”, “mail you should quickly scan just in case”, “mail that isn’t urgent but you’ll kick yourself if you don’t take care of it within a week”, etc. The communications client should have a much better understanding of your interests, priorities, and social environment, and help you manage shifting your inbox around after the messages are received.
And if that means people start getting a new generation of auto-replies back, so be it… it’s better than silence and email bankruptcies. “Sorry, my software has determined that your message is currently the 2209th most important thing in my inbox. Please try again later.”
how’s the new pool Mike?
I was thinking of similar thang, except do it with an email program that will auto-respond to “spammers” with your own advertising. Kinda like anti-spam spam program. That’d be a good startup and make gazillions.
Palo Alto Software just released a product you may be interested in. It’s called Email Center Pro and it fits the bill for what your seeking…
This is going to be fun. I’ll have the perfect solution for you by Thursday. I promise.
Here’s a link:
http://www.emailcenterpro.com/
B. Ackles, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
http://www.emailcenterpro.com/ is the answer to the questions you’re raising – with regard to customer and business email. Email Center Pro centralizes all of that mail so that nobody has to own all it. The transparency permits multiple users to deal collectively with the email streaming in from various addresses.
Create a hierarchy of notification/alerts for individuals as you receive email over time. This can be done by subject matter also, but is more time consuming. I use color, sound, forward to SMS, and finally level 1 alerts on my blackberry.
Finally, put a warning in your email signature that you do not read all your emails and that silence does not equal consent, admission, or anything.
And let’s start an award fund for the person that comes up with even a 20% improvement in technology or approach. I’ll donate $100.
Keep your eyes on reachcards.com. Our mantra is ‘always reachable, never disturbed’.
Michael,
It should be recognized as a universal law that “The amount of mail we receive tends to be proportional to, but always in excess of, our capacity to handle it.” As you get more tool support, you’ll find that you also get more messages…
For folk who are major message sinks, as they get tools to more easily handle high message volumes, they will tend to take actions that encourage a higher rate of messages being sent. (e.g. When you answer emails promptly, you encourage people to send more…) Also, as others get better tools to handle high message volumes, they will tend to use a lower bar in deciding which messages are good enough to send — thus, they will send more messages and won’t worry as much about bothering you since they will assume you are capable of handling the volume.
I’ve been working with email and messaging systems since the late 70’s and have some ideas on how to make higher volumes sustainable, however, I have no illusions that doing so would actually reduce anyone’s complaints about how many messages they receive…
bob wyman
But of course I can’t email you to tell you about it, please take this seriously as I’m pretty sure this is the killer solution. I work for the Uk’s leading web charity so I have a history of inventing clever web stuff.
Mike email me if you want the outline i just wrote up, it’s got to be worth a look
Email is in my comments hidden bit…
I’ve noticed that you often comment on your blog posts, and I was thinking when I read this post that you’ll probably keep up with the comments here and maybe respond to some of them… while simultaneously not checking your voicemail and email inboxes or unread skype messages. Some combination of personal webspace and personal assistants is probably the (an) answer. Sadly, I don’t have the expertise, connections, or time to take it further than that.
Oh, and btw… I’ve always hated the phone even in the days before email. Just like in those days, I hardly ever answer it when it rings.
Here’s my “email and inbox thesis” – this is what I and my company have been focused on solving for the last couple of years:
The volume of information that people (people in this context refers primarily to “information workers” but is rapidly growing to include just about everyone) receive via email is far more than they can process effectively using the sequential processing of individual messages for which most email clients are designed. At the same time, the information and the range of tasks/actions that flow through email are increasing in scope, importance, and variety. This necessitates new means of information processing consisting of the following elements: prioritization of incoming email, categorization of information, aggregation of related information, and context-specific actions for different types of information. This allows users to process information more effectively by taking advantage of the context of the information to provide a set of relevant actions to deal with information at a higher level than a single message basis.
More here: http://www.emai...ail-and-in.html
We’re just beginning alpha on the latest version of our solution that has helped many thousands of business email users solve their email problems.
Good points on prioritizing, but I’m not sure how outdated your email application really is. The technology already exists to make your mind blowing inbox less of a headache and it comes in the form of “filters.” All it would take is a half hour to set up keywords and favorite emailers and bam, it starts sorting out most of those messages into a neat little folders.
The more you are involved in things, the more people you get to know, the bigger will be the e-mail-problem or let me say message problem. If you write in public, many people begin to ask you for help, if they see that you know more than they know.
20 years ago you got a letter, read it and this work was finished. Today you get an e-mail and it is not finished after reading it. Almost every e-mail causes further tasks and time.
I try to solve this problem by scanning the content of e-mails. Not reading. Sometimes I find some interesting words in it. Maybe then I will reply. But when receiving 20 sentences, I reply perhaps with 3 words.
Any tasks that are coming with an e-mail will be deleted, if they are not important. Because when they would be important, then I will remember them some day.
The main problem today is that many people believe that everything is important. And if you think so you will never manage work.
Here’s what you’re looking for: 90% of anyone’s inbox can be classified into 5, 10 or 20 different issues. For instance, someone might:
(i) want an interview with you
(ii) want to discuss a “serious” issue in a published post in TC
(iii) want you to know about their “hot” startup
(iv) want to invite you to speak/participate at an “key” event
…and on and on it goes. Your decisions come down to the evaluation of what “serious” really is, or how “hot” the startup is, etcetera.
REAL friends might be sending out the stupid youtube links and photos and such, but most people have these categories. WHICH THE USER CAN DETERMINE, AND CREATE FORMS FOR.
So, I go into gmail and type Mike’s address. Gmail puts me on hold: “gathering user-defined requests for you”. Then a list of, say, 15 items like the above comes up. Then if I want to “invite to speak/participate in an event”, I fill out a form with the fields you have defined. If I still want to send an email, then I do it knowing that I’ll be breaking your workflow and you may never reply/read.
Whenever you have the time, you can review all such requests. And software could even rank the requests based on your own settings.
This would improve workflow tremendously. Most of the time we would be on “review of interview request’s mode”, or “review of employee travel request mode”, or “review of relevant hilarious stuff not on Digg”, or review of something else mode.
Please god Google, go build it; then make it a web standard. I really need it. More about this on my blog, Mike.
Now go friend me in facebook!
I think a proper solution requires a combination of both technology as well as best practices by email users.
For example, if mail is sent to multiple people but only some of the recipients are considered primary consumers of the mail, the sender should place the primary recipients in the To: field and everyone else in the CC: field. Given this practice, we can implement email prioritization rules based on where our name appears.
Another idea is to have senders tag their mail. Email clients could support tag cloud views and we can auto-prioritize mail with certain tags or combination of tags.
wow. good stuff
finally the solution: email has not to be read. i should be listened to.
a reverse spinvox for email. the content of your email will be extracted automatically at reception and sent to cheap labor a few thousand miles away. they will quickly read it and send it back to our server. what happens next time you open your email is that you fire a play button and go about your business (maybe read techcrunch). while you do so your email will be read to you and if something catches your attention you can go back and reply, if not it will keep going to the next message and save the previous item.
12 months from launch the plugin will be improved to recognize voice inputs such as STOP, PLAY, REPLY, FWD, SEND…..
now i do not want to go to the details of the app i am caught up working on it, but you can expect it soon.
don’t know what to make out of the fact that I know who wrote the email in the post, simply because I read his blog.
It’s too bad this has to be begged for. You would have thought someone would have created a solution by now.
This is the price to pay for being successful entrepreneur and having an awesome life!!
Nat
http://www.workersinc.com
With all the spam out there its impossible to keep a clean inbox. For example I currently have Inbox(13741), Bulk(5090). That 13,741 emails are more or less spam that wasn’t identified as one.
The best bet I found is to have an alert for my inbox, that way I get a popup whenever I get a new message and can answer it instantly if its important or ignore it. As for going through the emails one by one(i.e. when you are not around), what I usually do is put a mark at the last message before logging off. Then do a quick catch up and be done with it.
Michael,
I disagree completely and utterly. You’re just slacking, and you want something to magically do your work for you.
I’ve created over 1200 filters on my gmail for a reason. It’s not impossible to deal with this.
A DC startup has developed on solution to this: http://www.awayfind.com.
I have serious amount of email to deal with as well, but as an agency owner…I have to be responsive, so i tend to just plug away on that inbox….
The entrepreneurial solution to too much email:
Use your Executive Asst to filter your email! Simple. If you don’t have one then use your 10 year old kid. If you don’t have one of those then you may have to use my web 2.0 solution (see below).
How is that for a great idea?
Of course, if you wanted a Web 2.0 solution you could post your email on a wacky site that filters your email via crowdsourcing and removes vowels from the domain name (http://www.emailchkr.com — watch out, Network Solutions probably just bought up this domain name).
You could even add a Digg vote up/vote down button to each email.
Even better, you could get users to register accounts and upload their photos and twitter RSS feeds.
Then you can open an API and board office workers can make mashups with your email, Google Maps and Flickr.
Finally, you can beg and plead Michael Arrington to post your site on Techcrunch for free traffic. But he won’t because your site has no business model and isn’t earning a red cent.
How’s that for a Web2.0 solution?
Its called a secretary.
They read your email. Respond to the crap and then come to you or email you twice per day with things that you need to personally respond to.
Checking email once per hour or two is a huge waste of time.
@ #24 Alex – anything that allows the sender to classify things will be abused. That ‘request’ type is just meta tags for email at that point, and we all know how well meta tags worked out for classifying HTML pages. Filters that define labels/tags for incoming messages based on previous behaviour (do I always reply to this person? Do I always ignore them?), mixed in with social media feeds (I haven’t emailed with this person before but I follow them on twitter) will be a powerful combination. It looks like emaildashboard.com’s product already does some of the first part I was mentioning (historical pattern on the sender).
ClintJCL,
1200 filters? that’s it?
I have 4345 gmail accounts, one for each task/purpose/person in my life. Each one of those has anywhere between 456-3453 labels per account.
If MA thinks he has it bad he should sign into one of my accounts
It’s a structural problem – your business model does not allow for margins high enough to hire necessary people, or you have not yet communicated with the world an org structure that would let us shift the burden to your team. Now, how can you apply your Web 2.0 perspective to create a structure that will filter 100x the information reliably, neutrally and – above all – cheaply? (hint: volunteers and reputation systems – see Newsvine)
Its like a reverse spam filter. Import your facebook and linkedin networks, analyze the sent items box… Boom. Done.
Is mail os x customizable like this? Google, apple, are u listening?
Yes, I know who this VC is and find it quite alarming that his firm doesn’t utilize an email manager. Though, I’m actually pleased to see that he at least has set up a auto responder.
btw- this technology has been around for years in the contact cater market. It’s always rules based. SIMPLE, SIMPLE, SIMPLE!!!
The solution is money, as usual.
Solution: Paying mail messages.
The easy way to filter mail messages is to read those messages that will pay you for your time. If a message comes from a friend you will obviously immediately pay him back.
How to do this is fairly simple I guess, just provide a web application to: 1/ write a mail to you, 2/ tell how much money comes with it (paypal paid for example).
Pre-paid would be nice too. One buys the “right” to send say 10 mails to you (using a regular mailer, not a web form). When the 11th one is received an auto-answer warns the sender that his credit needs a refill. Registered Friends and family get unlimited credit of course.
I would more than welcome any VC interested in funding this idea
@ 36 Michael
I think you didn’t quite get my point (I do agree with your suggestions of social media feeds and previous behavior, but they are not incompatible at all with my suggestion–they are complementary).
I don’t mean “meta tags” at all. I mean FORMS.
Email was based on the metaphor of electronic letters. But as I mention on my blog it is used mostly as workflow, not personal letters.
So, I have a hot startup to send to Mike. I select the right form, and it magically appears in my screen:
1. What’s your business?
2. How do you monetize?
3. List all your competitors, their websites, and for each, how you differentiate your proposal
4. List your rounds of financing, if any.
5. etcetera etcetera etcetera
So NOW email has a cost for the sender. NOW it has less cost for Mike, because he can evaluate dozens of such forms rapidly. he can classify them by business and competitors. He can use that structured info to rapidly post something, or automatically reply, after the workflow, to the unfortunate that “your proposal has been considered and we are not prepared to post yet; please resubmit should you consider that you have a unique offering”; etc.
How long does it take to reply to 2400 emails? FOREVER.
How long does it take to fill 15 positions with 2400 candidates? Some 5 hours will bring you a shortlist.
I’d create a credits-based e-mail account.
For example:
You write an e-mail to your editor. He earns 1 credit.
When he replies, his credits towards you become null. There’re no pending credits for both parts.
The more credits the sender has towards you, higher is his priority in your inbox.
That means if you write your editor more than he replies you, that means it must be somehow important to get his feedback!
On the opposite, that friend of yours who sends you 5 youTube videos a day and you never reply him has really low priority in your inbox.
And about that first time writer, he begins with 0 credits, which means he’ll have a good chance to have his e-mail read by you, comparing to your spammer friend.
You could also implement intelligent bots that records which senders or message keywords you usually reply faster, giving them higher priority in your inbox.
The important thing is having intelligent bots to save you the time of creating rules for each different person that gets into your e-mail network.
We’ll, I’d surely use this credit system.
If you need a partner to develop that, you can count on me
@42 Alex
What’s to stop me from selecting the ‘wrong’ category to get my message through? *Eventually* someone may block me because I’m submitting stuff under the wrong category heading. Maybe. But not everyone will necessarily do that, so there’ll be enough incentive to misclassify the emails with the intention of getting around the roadblocks people are putting up (by putting those forms up in the first place). It’s the same concept as meta tag – *I* (sender/siteowner) get to denote how someone else (recipient, robot, etc.) should classify the content. We already have that with ’subject’ fields and to a lesser extent ‘priority’ flags that some clients add. And it hasn’t really worked. You know you end up ignoring those emails from Joe down the hall in accounting because he marks *every* email as ‘URGENT’. Your solution doesn’t strike me as that different from what we have now.
However, you’re also suggesting workflow solutions for specific problem sets, and many people use those. However, when they also have an ‘inbox’ that will accept *anything* (as most of us do) it only addresses a small portion of the data.
@43 Ohmar
People WITH time will keep on sending and getting credit. Now, if the King of Spain sends you a message, he has 0 credits? You are creating the wrong incentive system.
And @41, paying mail: Would reduce the email tsunamis, on the cost that if Mike keeps his money and never replies, (some) people will be enormously mad at him. It is a dangerous solution.
We have to impose costs on the senders. My idea is to impose them by giving you structured information and cutting the BS. This not only imposes costs on the senders, but helps software to rank stuff, and can even generate automatic
consequences (You approve a “request for travel expenses”, and your accountant gets his own forms filled automatically).
We must change the metaphor of email, from letters, to workflow requests.
Mike:
Truly insightful post! Thanks! I think Scoble once wrote about a solution for this.
Coaching start-ups? Are you going to teach them how to be like Edgeio? Come on:)
@ alex – you’re on the right track, sort of. I wouldn’t say ‘replace’ the concept of email as ‘letters’, but expand the notion of ‘workflow’ messaging outside the typical “enterprise/business” mindset. “Lifeflow messaging” has enough of a corny ring to it that perhaps I’ll get funded on that basis alone. We could do a joint venture if you’d like!
@44 Michael. Why would someone select the wrong category? They want to pinch a startup up and select “outrageously funny tech stuff that’s not on digg?” Then they fill that form that you created, instead of sending something “outrageously funny…”, pinching you with some startup?
Think about the psychological aspect: You are now focused on reviewing outrageously funny stuff, all classified and broken down according to your pre-defined form. It´s not the free-for-all that is email. If something is obviously not on that category, the sender is an idiot and you’ll know in a split second.
Unless you would like to pinch you company in an “outrageously funny way not seen on digg”, your incentive to choose the wrong form is really null.
@48 I’m all for it, Michael!!