![Robin Blandford [ ByteSurgery.com ]](http://www.bytesurgery.com/blog/wp-content/themes/starkers/images/blank.gif)
30/04/08 Communications: Campaign For Human Contact
SINGAPORE - The web has boomed with services. Developers have learned that there’s value in knowing who your users are and how to contact them. As we generate hundreds of username/password combinations as we trawl the internet we also make a new friend in our address book…
noreply@xxx.com
Before you know it they’re dropping you automated emails to keep you engaged. They’re genuinely helpful reminders, sure. Here’s a sample of mine…
Well - I’m on a campaign for human contact. As my email volume increases, if its not important enough to contain a message from a human then it can wait. I will read it when I am ready, not when your scheduled bot decides, but thanks for offering. I am now filtering out everything [bot] from my inbox to a sub-folder.
What does this include?
Anything that is mass-mailed and non-critical or is initiated as a notification by a website due to a user action. Newsletters, special offers, new contacts on services, new content available, corporate mails, new subscribers etc.
What does it not include?
Anything written to me, a note, a message, an announcement, or is content that could be time-critical.
Why? Well I believe that email is my central nervous system - everything should come to it. I do not wish for private mail boxes with services (like facebook, bebo mail, linked in mail etc.) It should all come here, not to my separate accounts.
One day this will break-out again to a distributed model where you have multiple notifications with different personas stored all over the place. Shared ones, secure ones, private ones, kids ones, work ones, super-fast ones. The value will be in the aggregation of them all to a single client - and just like the feedreaders of today, you’ll have the volume control, priorities and simple ability to drop them with a single click.
-Robin.
(Image Credit: Trying to pop the right balloons at a fair in Taiwan. By Author.)
Tags: automail, bots, Email, filters, General, gmail, spam
2 Comments
Almost all my non-personal mail is automatically redirected to special Bloglines addresses which makes it appear alongside my RSS feeds — very handy.
Great idea Andy. I should do that with all newsletters etc.
