A Marketplace for Attention: Responses to a Synthetic Currency Used to Signal Information Importance in E-Mail  

The productivity of information workers is jeopardized by too much e–mail. A proposed solution to e–mail overload is the creation of an economy that uses a scarce synthetic currency that senders can use to signal the importance of information and receivers can use to prioritize messages. A test of the virtual economy with corporate information workers showed that people in a large company used different amounts of the currency when sending e–mail messages, and that the amount of currency attached to messages produced statistically significant differences in how quickly receivers opened the messages. An analysis of the network of virtual currency trades between workers showed the different roles that participants played in the communication network, and showed that relationships defined by currency exchanges uncovered social networks that are not apparent in analyses that only examine the frequency, as opposed to the value of interactions.

Reeves, Byron, Simon Roy, Brian Gorman and Teresa Morley. First Monday (2008). Articles>Communication>Correspondence>Email

The New Email Law and You

If you are using email to market your small business, here's what you need to know about the new spam law, the CAN-SPAM Act, which went into effect on January 1st.

Benun, Ilise. Creative Latitude (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Email

A New Way to Talk: ComputerEase.common  

Have you noticed? As the world shrinks, the need for good communication gets bigger. More people talk, chat, argue, negotiate, make love, and make war through electronic communication today than ever before. If you can't communicate electronically with ease, then you'd better learn fast. To rephrase Yogi Bera, 'if you don't know how to talk on the information highway, you'll end up somewhere else.' The purpose of this progression is to foster dynamic roundtable discussion about what it means to communicate well through electronic means such as email.

Baxley, Deborah Lewis. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Communication>Online>Email

Old Claims with a New Twist: E-Harassment in the Workplace

Many companies carry out portions of their business via an intranet or the Internet. Other companies grant access to the Internet to some, if not all, employees. The ease with which these systems allow employees to communicate with each other and with the outside world presents obvious business advantages. Unfortunately, employers now realize that the advantages gained by these technologies bring with them the risk of a new wave of harassment claims based on the alleged misuse of these modes of communication. In order to reduce these claims, or at least attempt to minimize exposure to such claims, employers will have to adjust to meet the new dynamics of a changing workplace.

Towns, Douglas M. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Discrimination>Email

Privacy Laws and Communication

With the advent of the Internet and the ability to send personal information to many places in very little time, privacy has become an important issue for businesses across the globe. How to retain the free flow of information without violating an individual’s right to privacy is a difficult balance to strike and one that different countries approach in various ways.

Turbeville, Heather. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Privacy>Email

Protecting the User's Mailbox

Email is a powerful way to reach customers, but overdoing it is risky. Let users know up front that you'll respect their mailboxes. Otherwise, they won't give their email addresses, and you'll lose a unique channel for marketing and customer service.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

The Readers and Writers Behind Electronic Mail

As electronic mail replaces face-to-face communication in many work environments, a thorough analysis of this evolving medium and its impact on communication is necessary. In many workplaces, telephone calls and knocks on doors have dramatically decreased in frequency, but the number of emails that circulate through one’s inbox is continuing to increase. Yet, our understanding of this new medium and how it is being used is limited. Some scholars argue that email has many of the characteristics of speech; some argue that it has the same characteristics as writing, while others argue that it is a completely new genre of communication.

Abolrous, Sally. University of Washington-Seattle (2002). Articles>Communication>Online>Email

Six Tips for Effective E-Mail

Who to target with your email, how long it should be, and what should and shouldn't go in it so that it can be an effective means of communication for you.

Hayhoe, George F. IEEE PCS (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Email>Podcasts

A Theoretical Approach to Using Electronic Mail or Why Doesn't Anyone Respond to My E-Mail  

The features of time, place, speaker, and audience define the situational context of any communication--face-to-face, paper-based, or electronic. However, they are significantly altered in electronic communication. If participants in electronic communications do not recognize how these features are altered they may not be able to use their electronic mail effectively.

Goubil-Gambrell, Patricia and Rockie Beaman. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Unified Communication Systems

Unified messaging and person-to-person communications over heterogeneous networks are relatively new applications. Many commercial messaging systems, such as Onebox.com and Ericsson's Unified Messenger, have already begun their journey in this direction. There is much room for growth, however, and many other systems will soon need the capabilities described above just to stay competitive in the market.

Andrews, Christopher R. ACM Crossroads (2001). Articles>Communication>Email

Using E-mail To Make Your Pitch

Gone are the days when you called a reporter, mailed a letter or sent a fax and expected to get a callback. These days, more reporters than ever are relying on e-mail to review news pitches or story ideas. Pitching by e-mail is sometimes more difficult than sending a pitch letter by standard mail or calling a reporter on the telephone, because with more and more e-mail being sent these days, yours needs to stand out from the rest. Here are tips on how to make your pitch stand out in the maze of e-mail communications that reporters, and other media contacts, receive each day.

Lee, Terry and Rich Brant. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Where is Email 2.0? And Why is Commercial Email So Boring?

I don't recall the last time I received a commercial email that made me take notice or smile.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Why "Best Buddy" Emails Work So Well. Sometimes.

The best buddy approach works within specific product and service sectors, where readers can easily be tripped into a state of dissociation...because they have problems that the writer promises to solve.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

With the Latest Software, Track How Your Readers are Interacting With Your E-Newsletter

While webmasters have long been able to study how site visitors interact with a web site, e-mail has been more elusive. No more. With the latest generation of smart e-mail software, marketers can now essentially look over the shoulders of their readers, seeing first-hand what works, what needs improvement and what is simply falling on deaf ears.

Dysart, Joe. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Marketing>Email

Writing Effective E-Mail: Top 10 Tips

The informal e-mails you exchange with your friends don't have to meet any particular standards, but if you want to be taken seriously by professionals, you should learn proper e-mail etiquette.

Bauer, Jessica and Dennis G. Jerz. Seton Hill University (2000). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Writing Effective E-Mail: Top 10 Tips

This document offers 10 tips to help you write effective professional e-mails. The informal e-mails you exchange with your friends don't have to meet any particular standards, of course, but if you want to be taken seriously by people who use e-mail frequently, you should know e-mail etiquette.

Bauer, Jessica. University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (2001). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

The Use of Electronic Mail in Biomedical Communication    

Publication in general medical journals stimulates more conventional than electronic mail. However, the content of e-mail may be of greater scientific relevance. Electronic mail can be encouraged without fear of diminishing the quality of the communications received.

Costello, Richard, Anthony Shaw, Roz Cheetham and Robert J. Moots. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (2000). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Email

Ten Tips For Your First Email Campaign

I’ve seen too many web designers dive into their first email marketing project before doing the proper planning. There are some basic things you need to square away before you send your first email newsletter.

Chestnut, Ben. Digital Web Magazine (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Email

Managing Email Overload

One of the most fundamental tools used in any form of e-business is email, but most of us don't really think about it - we just use it out of habit, not with any real plan. And as business becomes ever busier it's easy to become inundated with email and fall so far behind that it becomes useless and customers get frustrated with lack of responsiveness.

Oxer, Jonathan. Internet Vision Technologies (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Summarizing Email Conversations with Clue Words  

Accessing an ever increasing number of emails, possibly on small mobile devices, has become a ma jor problem for many users. Email summarization is a promising way to solve this problem. In this paper, we propose a new framework for email summarization. One novelty is to use a fragment quotation graph to try to capture an email conversation. The second novelty is to use clue words to measure the importance of sentences in conversation summarization. Based on clue words and their scores, we propose a method called CWS, which is capable of producing a summary of any length as requested by the user. We provide a comprehensive comparison of CWS with various existing methods on the Enron data set. Preliminary results suggest that CWS provides better summaries than existing methods.

Carenini, Giuseppe, Raymond T. Ng and Xiaodong Zhou. WWW 2007 (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Email

Does Email Communication Increase Participation in Organizational Decision Making?

One of the main issues crossing the fields of organization theory, communication theory, and information technology is whether email communication does increase participation in decision making. Common sense and some case studies suggest the so-called "democratization argument": since email allows direct (non-filtered) communication between people and identity/status concealment, it enhances more freely and easy participation in decision making.

Biggiero, Lucio. Social Science Research Network (2008). Articles>Collaboration>Organizational Communication>Email

Is Your Email Businesslike — or Brusque?

Anyone whose ever been part of an online "flame war" has had the experience of a tiny "e-mole" becoming a mountain. Studies have shown that readers add (or invent) emotional bias that is often counter to your intent as the sender. In this case, all of the niceties you thought you were writing ended up sounding very different in the mind of your employee.

Silverman, David. Harvard University (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Web Writing for Email

Learning about writing for the web has made me a better email communicator and project manager. Email would be much more effective if content was broken out in easy-to-understand sections with a clear guide for next steps at the end.

Johnson, Beth. Brain Traffic (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email

Ars Dictaminis Perverted: The Personal Solicitation E-mail as a Genre    

Phishing e-mails deceive individuals into giving out personal information which may then be utilized for identity theft. One particular type, the Personal Solicitation E-mail (PSE) mimics personal letters—modern perversions of ars dictaminis (the classical art of letter writing). In this article, I determine and discuss 19 appeals common to the PSE. These appeals were established first by conducting generative rhetorical analysis, then by volunteer coding, on 170 e-mails collected over a 12-month period. After defining these categories, I show how these letters are excellent twenty-first century teaching tools for pathos-based argumentation, logical appeals, the creation of ethos, and kairos in the development of perceived exigency.

Ross, Derek G. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Email>Rhetoric

Practitioners' Views About the Use of Business Email Within Organizational Settings: Implications for Developing Student Generic Competence    

Although extensive research has been done on teaching emails and on the use of emails in organisations, little research exists about how to incorporate organizational practitioners' views as the voices of the community of social practice. To remedy this pedagogical gap, this article uses a genre approach to discuss organizational practitioners' views on the use of email in organizational settings. It also develops seven teaching and learning stages for situated learning and teaching in business communication based upon the presented study findings.

Zhu, Yunxia and Catherine White. Business Communication Quarterly (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email