Comments on: Email Etiquette for Message Importance – When “Importance: High” = “Don’t Waste Your Time” http://askthemanager.com/2009/06/email-etiquette-for-message-importance-when-importance-high-equals-dont-waste-your-time/ Leadership Development & Management Training Fri, 11 May 2012 10:38:56 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Skip Anderson http://askthemanager.com/2009/06/email-etiquette-for-message-importance-when-importance-high-equals-dont-waste-your-time/#comment-38254 Skip Anderson Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:32:37 +0000 http://askthemanager.com/?p=200#comment-38254 You are so right. I get a bi-weekly email from an organization that holds "get acquainted" meetings in hopes I (and others) will become a member, and they're always flagged as being of "High Importance" This email might be highly important to them because they need members, but it's not highly important to me...in fact it's not important at all to me. If I wanted to join their organization, I would have done so already. The emails Would be highly important, however, if they included a free trip for two to Greece with every membership. That would be truly of high importance. This sender, and all email senders who tag their messages with "high importance", would be well served to remember the "What's In It For Me" concept; recipients don't care about the sender, they only care about themselves. But instead, I have classified all email from this sender as "junk" so now I don't read any of their emails, they end up in junk-email-land so they've lost 100% of my attention by crying wolf with every email they've sent me in the last two years. Skip Anderson You are so right. I get a bi-weekly email from an organization that holds “get acquainted” meetings in hopes I (and others) will become a member, and they’re always flagged as being of “High Importance”

This email might be highly important to them because they need members, but it’s not highly important to me…in fact it’s not important at all to me. If I wanted to join their organization, I would have done so already.

The emails Would be highly important, however, if they included a free trip for two to Greece with every membership. That would be truly of high importance.

This sender, and all email senders who tag their messages with “high importance”, would be well served to remember the “What’s In It For Me” concept; recipients don’t care about the sender, they only care about themselves.

But instead, I have classified all email from this sender as “junk” so now I don’t read any of their emails, they end up in junk-email-land so they’ve lost 100% of my attention by crying wolf with every email they’ve sent me in the last two years.

Skip Anderson

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