Nip Long Emails in the Bud
In Your Digital Office by SkellieNick Cernis shares his number one tip for defeating long emails: stop them before they arrive. By using a contact form rather than a raw email link, you can set the maximum number of characters allowed in the form. When the emailer reaches your limit the form won’t allow them to type any more, necessitating a quick edit to prune the email down to size.
To set the maximum number of characters, add a maxlength attribute to your email form with the following code:
<input name=”message” type=”text” />
becomes this:
<input name=”message” maxlength=”500″ type=”text” />
Replace ‘500′ with your chosen character limit. It’s also essential that you add a caution about the character limit before emailers start typing away.
via Nick [Put Things Off]
January 22nd, 2008
Ever hear of the five.sentenc.es policy?
five.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be five sentences or less. It’s that simple.
January 22nd, 2008
Good idea. I took off my contact form and am getting more comments instead. I know it is advantageous to have multiple ways to contact me but I now only focus on my subscribers–it weeds out casual contacts and helps me focus on my core list–building better relationships with them and those who take the time to comments.
Any thoughts?
January 23rd, 2008
That’s a great idea…as long as people aren’t
January 23rd, 2008
crazy enough to send you two emails so they can fit everything in.
January 23rd, 2008
Yeah, limiting the words can be helpful but really, a better choice would be to just hire a virtual assistant (assuming you’re popular enough)…
January 23rd, 2008
Isn’t input type=”text” just for single-line text boxes?
January 24th, 2008
I use the “lead by example” method. When I receive a long winded email I reply with a short to the point email. And if they still don’t get it, I start ending mine with something like “Got to get back to work.” Usually after a few times they catch on and start shortening their emails.
If that doesn’t work I will put off replying to the email until they email again to make sure I got the first one. I then shoot a quick reply saying something like “Sorry, haven’t had a chance to read it, it looked like it was going to take some time to read it all and I have been swamped. I will get to it before the end of the day” Of course I have already read it to make sure it wasn’t about anything urgent.
These seem to work for me. Except for my dad he still likes to send me 3-page emails and still types in all caps. I just call him on the phone and get it that way, I never bother reading the email.