Making Email a Better File Cabinet

Yes, Facebook and Twitter are popular, but a recent study by Osterman Research found that email remains the most important channel for business communications. The same study found that 55% of business users say that over a quarter of the information they need for work is tucked away in email folders.

Clearly, we're all still using email, and we all still need ready access to the information that's buried somewhere in email. Search tools built into applications like Gmail, Thunderbird, and Outlook are a big help for tracking down messages that contain a specific search phrase or keyword. Nonetheless, there are a few guidelines that email senders can follow to make it easier for recipients to find the data they're looking for, even if the message arrived months or even years ago, whether or not recipients are using email application search engines.

1. Make the subject line factual and descriptive.
   For example, instead of "Chaa-ching!", write something more prosaic like "Sales Order from Liberty Capital." You can add "Chaa-ching" at the end of the line or in the body of the message, if you like, but keep the first part of the subject line—the part someone notices first when skimming down a long list of titles—purely descriptive.
2. Label like messages in like ways.
   If you're sending sales orders and you title every message containing a sales order with the formula, "Sales Order from . . . ", you'll make it easier for your recipients to lay their hands on the order they're looking for, no matter how cluttered their email inbox is. When I send clients review drafts of business plans, white papers, or other business documents, I always write, "PLEASE REVIEW:" followed by the draft number and the document title. My clients are busy people, and I hope this formulaic titling makes it a little easier for them to notice that a new document has arrived that needs their attention.
   
3. When the subject matter of an email thread has changed substantially, begin a new thread or change the title accordingly.
   At the time, it might have seemed natural for the discussion on the new office printer to somehow become a discussion of the a new network monitoring feature that product management is trying to cram into the next software release, but two months from now, when you're looking for the market data to back up product management, you might not think to look at messages whose title refers to the new HP printer on the second floor.
4. Tag a message high priority only if it really is high priority.If you label everything as high priority, then 1) after a week or two your recipients will roll their eyes and ignore your sense of urgency, and 2) when they need to find that truly urgent message you sent, they'll have a harder time.
   

Paying any attention at all to email subject lines might seem pedantic, but I think it behooves all of us to recognize that we're swamped with information that's chaotically organized, and that's little things can make a difference.

Microsoft did a study a year or two ago and found that business users spend roughly one day per week just looking for the information they in order to do their jobs. That's a colossal waste of time, isn't it? One day of your week, every week, just hunting for data? That's the equivalent of showing up for work every day between January 1 and mid-March simply to tidy your office. Wouldn't you rather be able to use that time getting things done?

Enterprise search tools and improved email applications obviously help with this problem. But a little discipline in email authoring can make a difference, as well.

File cabinet photo by mrmanc, licensed by Creative Commons, some rights reserved.