On Words and Business

If you’re like me, you sign up for all sorts of RSS feeds and email newsletters. You read them for a while. Then start only skimming them. Then maybe read the headlines or subject line to decide if you even want to skim. Then simply delete when you see the return address in your inbox. Then finally get around to unsubscribing.

Then you start up again with an entirely new set of blogs and newsletters.

If you are like me, there are only a few stalwart sources that don’t end up in that cycle. You may not read ever word of every issue or post, but you continue to find value in them.

What are those writers and publishers doing to keep you engaged?

From the Boston Globe: To ensure prompt replies, build a better e-mail.

Key points:

• Topical subject line
• Professional and clear reply to email address
• Emphasize connections or referrals
• Be brief (full disclosure: I have a hard time with this one)
• Make the call to action apparent
• Attach and paste
• Complete contact information

Nothing like going on vacation to help see what is and isn’t important.  Like many of you, I get lots of email messages each day–either from clients or newsletters or marketing from sources I’ve requested.

In going through the email that arrived in my two-week absence, there were quite a few I simply deleted. From the subject line I could tell that they weren’t worth my time to read.

The good news about this was that I realized most of these sources send me at least one useful email every two weeks. And the couple of sources that didn’t are on my watch list. Maybe I can unsubscribe to a couple and help keep my inbox relevant.

Literally.

Bookmark this page: RealSnailMail.net

It’s officially launching on August 11, but you can test it now.

An email is loaded onto a chip on the back of an a live snail, when it comes near enough to the pick up point. Then, whenever the snail gets near enough to the drop off point, the email will be picked up and sent on to the recipient. Speed of light everywhere except on the snail’s back–so who knows how long it’ll take to arrive.

So cool!

(Apologies to Monty Python)

According to the November/December Marketing Management magazine, the U.S. relays more span than any other country (19.6%), according to Sophos, which scanned all the spam stuck in its traps and traced how they traveled there. China is next in line with 8.4%, then South Korea with 6.5%.

The brief goes on to say that it’s estimated that Americans spend about “$7.8 billion for computer repairs, parts, and replacement over the past two years as a result of viruses and spyware alone.”

Just a hunch, but I bet not much of that $7.8 billion was spent by Mac users.

Someone is actually working on a stupid filter for email messages, as Josh Quittner writes in this week’s Fortune magazine. This “promises to do to idiotic online comments what a spam filter does to unwanted e-mail: put it in a place where it can’t hurt anyone.”

We all can write stupid sometimes. But irony and sarcasm, not generally considered stupidity, are harder to keep on the right side of the filter. Here’s an intriguing quote from the article, and something to think about if you want not to be seen as stupid.

“…Ortiz, who studied linguistics as an undergrad, recently noticed a pattern in the way some writers use letter repetition. The clueless tend to repeat consonants: ‘This video is amazinggggg!!!’ By comparison, say Ortiz, ‘when you repeat a vowel, you are being sarcastic–’Yeaaaaaah.’”

Visit StupidFilter if you want to help out.