Carl Setzer

Inbox announced Porn-bots sing their siren song Empty of beauty

I just received an email with the following request: "if you service the following states, NY, NJ, PA, OH, MD, VT, MI, ME, CT and NH...". I immediately closed and deleted the email, for I'm in Washington. But then I started thinking, "why did the sender blast this out to the entire country?" Today, right now, with pretty much every CRM tool, you can refine your targets. With a few minutes of work, the sender of this email could've culled a few words from their message as well as targeted her message. Too many irrelevant emails and you find yourself in the spam box. This ability to customize your message makes it significantly more relevant to your customers, to your audience. It makes you look more professional, and more knowledgeable. Powerful traits if you're trying to build an audience, or come across as an influencer. Or, if you simply don't want to waste your customer's time. Which is good thing to desire. So, the data is (or should be)...

The mania of my life lately has provided a convenient excuse for putting off zeroing my inbox. After spending a bit of my weekend scrambling because I missed crucial emails, I'm raising it's priority again. "Later's" glorious promise, and inevitable bite. In Stephen Covey parlance, I've spent too much time in Quadrant 1, urgent/important and Quadrant 3, urgent/unimportant. Neglecting the important/non-urgent work of Quadrant 2 has always provided pain points for me. KNOWING what's outstanding, what my commitments are: critical knowledge that I musn't allow to slip. And, hence, I"m all back in with my favorite project management tool:  IQTell . Additionally, making sure my work, my actions track with my goals, priorities and values is the ultimate in live-giving. Focus, focus, focus!

I've been wading thru massive amounts of email for far too long. Time for action! Now, as a geek with several domains, it was easy to create a special email for all my news and newsletters. As I'm going through and porting them all over, I'm seeing how many of these aren't relevant any more. I'm an information junkie. But is really time to draw back. I'm digging thru tons of news searching for stuff I need to attend to. Silly.

Let's all agree to start using the "To:" line correctly. Senders:  Put people in the "To" line who have action items, or are otherwise the direct focus of the email. E.g.: "Carl, please take care of this"...blah, blah. Use the "CC:" line for people on the email for informational purposes.  Readers: Look in the address header to see where you fit in before you read. Then you'll have a solid idea of whether you are being asked for information or action, or whether you're being informed of a status, data, what-have-you.  If we can all start following email 101, maybe we can de-confuse the world some. Maybe...