

Ask HN: What makes an email important? - nebulousplato

I am working for a startup working on fixing email :)<p>We want to know what makes an email important to you!   Is it who it is from? Perhaps an attachment icon?<p>Perhaps it is even a combination of many things ranging from subject to context of the email signature!   We want to know!<p>I would greatly appreciate if you could drop a few lines on how you filter through emails day to day, what makes one email deserve your time more than another?<p>www.getrebarapp.com
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dorfuss
Hm, that's not a simple question to answer.

It's not actually the matter of importance but rather of which e-mails can
wait. There is a client, a global corp. interested in becoming partners with
us who's willing to add our software to their products, big bucks involved,
and no matter what I'm doing at the moment I will answer their e-mails right
away when they come in.

On the other hand I have a small client who's not in a rush and I know I can
wait with him till Monday.

The bad habit is using the inbox as your to-do list, but that's what has
actually become. Certainly I should answer all the e-mails promptly, as
waiting for answer is really frustrating from the client's point of view.

Internal communication is most often the least important like what's for lunch
or who's going to play the ball after work, and most of this stuff should be
completely separated from e-mails sent by clients.

I think there also should be a text field for notes next to the e-mail's title
so that I could write short notes on how to process the e-mail once I have
time.

When I know I won't have time to answer a particular e-mail later I try to
answer it instantly, but later I might forget to follow up. If I don't have
time it's also good to know to whom I could forward the e-mail and know that
the person will 100% answer it on the very same day. Nothing is worse than
telling a Client someone else will fix the problem and then a week later you
learn that your colleague actually didn't get in touch with them.

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logn
If someone is emailing me due to something I messed up on, it's important. If
replying means I can close a sale, it's important. If not replying means I can
lose a customer, it's important. If I am blocking someone's progress by not
replying, it's maybe important.

And my favorite _un_ important email: anyone asking me to update them on the
status of something.

