Mail Lists: Be Less Annoying

My short series "E-mail: Be Less Annoying" struck a nerve. My inbox was flooded with a bucket of e-mail (with most of it not very annoying). So here's round two -- Mail Lists: Be Less Annoying.

Mail List Annoyances
If you're new to mail lists, or even if you're not, you can learn how to make your messages easier to read and more useful (and definitely less annoying to others).

1. Avoid responses the entire list won't find useful. For instance, don't reply to the entire list with "thanks," "good idea," or "I'll try it!" Instead, reply directly to the person who just helped you.

Unfortunately, on many lists it's easy to inadvertently reply to everyone instead of an individual. Take a sec and check the return address before hitting the Send key. The sender's e-mail address is usually near the top of the message.

Another tip: Insert OFFLIST to the start of your subject line when replying to an individual. That way the recipient will know you're not replying to the entire list.

2. When replying, it takes seconds to snip extraneous junk and leave only essential portions of the previous message. There's rarely a need to repeat the entire thread, and doing so often discourages people from reading the message.

No matter what you do, get rid of the stuff that's automatically inserted at the bottom of every message -- the "how to unsubscribe" junk -- that clutters up every message.

3. Just as with e-mail, consider tackling just one topic or issue per message, and keep your messages short. Long messages (more than, say, three or four paragraphs) are difficult to read; long paragraphs are equally difficult to plow through.

Tomorrow? Another stack of ideas to keep you from annoying the list.

Comments

I love it when you prefix your subjects with "Time Killer:"! It lets me know I'm not missing out when I don't have the time to read them. It lets me read your other posts without getting pulled too far off-track.

Joseph

July 12, 2006

2:01 PM PT

How about set your out of office message so that it does not reply to the mailing list.

Anonymous

July 13, 2006

1:44 PM PT