Hot Mail, Yahoo, etc. email accounts: an observation

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Clear Spot : One Thread

Noticed an interesting thing over the past week: People with Hot Mail, Yahoo, MSN, or other "annonymous" email accounts can be slooooooow to open/read/respond to their mail.

We sent out a relatively important email to people who were hired to work the 2004 10,000 Lakes Festival on Thursday, June 17th. Used a little online mailing service (that makes it easy and quick) that tracks things like the number of "undeliverables" (19% in this case), click-thoughs (to web pages linked in the email - 11%), and the subject of this note, "Opened." It's now 9 days later and interestingly enough, only 57% of the people we sent that relatively important message to have opened or read it.

And those are people who've been HIRED. That is to say, not "strangers" getting spammed by "strangers." They're people who've either worked for us before, or gone to all the trouble of applying (by standard mail or online), talked to us on the phone, are real interested in working at the festival, etc. People a person would THINK would open an email that clearly has something to do with their 10,000 Lakes Festival job.

No doubt it's a "human nature issue" that has to do with how web mail services work (we have to GO there to check, open, read whatever mail gets delivered), and it can be tricky to remember (or "be in the mood") to check those accounts.

On the one hand, services like Hotmail and Yahoo are great when it comes to having a simple and easy "spam filter" or firewall. But, on another, as this situation demonstrates, those accounts can make plain old envelopes with stamps on them look like the lightspeed alternative to getting important messages to people with email accounts... Go figure.

If you happen to wind up on the mailing list of, or getting hired to work at, any of the festivals for which we hire people we recommend you either use your "more direct" email address to communicate with us (if you have one -- and who with an ISP account doesn't?), or be sure to check your web mail regularly (just in case there's something important we'd need to let know about and respond to -- in less than a month).

-- Bill (festivals_employment@bossapolis.com), June 26, 2004

Answers

man

-- rĂ¼stem ataizi (speedyataizi@yahoo.com), February 12, 2005.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ