Email definitely has its place – but it can also become a huge crutch, replacing the “right” kind of communication for a given task with the “easy” one. We sometimes hear of an “emergency” that was communicated only via email, with the sender complaining that it wasn’t read or opened in time.

Emergencies don’t belong in email – at least not ONLY email – a personal visit or phone call is much more responsible if it's a true emergency. The same consideration needs to be made if it’s a sensitive topic, or potentially an emotional one where body language and the ability to adapt the conversation based on the recipient’s response  (on the fly)  is important.

Green Eggs & Ham

What do Green Eggs & Ham have to do with SPAM? Nothing! Just like spam has nothing to do with anything you care about.  If you don’t have it already, find and use some good spam services or tools. Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc all have spam engines, which help, but you need to mark messages as spam, use junk-mail rules to block senders, etc.

In your personal email life, keep two accounts - one for family, banking services, etc, and the other for account signups and shopping. This can really help in keeping your spam segregated away from the messages you really need.

Paid services (such as one we use here at Ultradent with our corporate email) can work much better. Currently the Ultradent mail system is blocking somewhere around 90% of the emails that come in – spam is dominating email everywhere – so you have to control it.

That’s enough to work on and digest for now. Like any monster, taming this beast takes some time and practice. Tune in again next week…