Sujectively speaking (From Salisbury Journal)

Sujectively speaking

12:49pm Monday 1st October 2007 in Your Computer

You may not think the subject line of an email is very important but it has great potential to confuse.

How often have you replied to an email because it is the easiest way to find the sender's address. However the topic has now changed - for example, you got an email about a meeting which has now passed and you want to query an invoice.

The original sender will get back an email with the subject "Re: Meeting on Wednesday" unless you make the effort to amend it to "Query about invoice 123456".

It makes a huge difference when scanning down the list of received mail, and may make the difference between getting a reply or not.

You also need to be aware of spam filtering software when choosing the words in the subject (and the email itself for that matter) - avoid the obvious ones such as "free", "offer" or anything to do with sex or gambling.

Uxbridge CC had a problem many years ago because their location is in "MiddleSEX", many of their emails were blocked before the software was adjusted.

Chris Stanbury - Cravenplan Computers (specialists in web design and web marketing) - www.cravenplan.co.uk Chris also acts as an expert witness on IT cases - www.it-expert-witness.co.uk