Are You Taking E-Mail Seriously? August 24, 2007 Losing e-mails means losing business
By Rebecca Aronauer
We know e-mail is essential. In a recent Brockmann and Company study of e-mail users, 86 percent of respondents listed e-mail as very important to the success of their business. Ahead of mobile phones, instant messaging and faxes, e-mail ranked as the most important communication service to job performance. And although most people depend on e-mail, only 21 percent of those surveyed are happy with their e-mail service.
One of the biggest problems is spam, which accounts for 15 percent of all messages reaching business users and is the third-largest source of e-mail. Most companies have filters in place to catch spam, but most of those filters are ineffective, according to Peter Brockmann, president of Boston-based Brockmann and Company. "Whatever people are doing with spam, it's not working," he says.
But catching spam and rerouting it out of inboxes is only part of the problem. While most people focus on how much spam makes it to their inboxes, they frequently fail to consider how much legitimate e-mail is mislabeled as spam.
These false positives can be more harmful than a spam-filled inbox, especially when an e-mail from a new client gets lost in the junk folder. Thirty-six percent of people surveyed have lost business to e-mail.
"The cure is worse than the disease. False positives are having a detrimental effect," says Kelly Anderson, the CEO of Sendio, an Irvine, Calif.-based anti-spam solution provider.
One solution Brockmann recommends is using send verifications, which programs servers to send a "challenge" e-mail to any person who is not in the address book. This verifies that the sender is real and eliminates the threat of mislabeling legitimate e-mail as spam.
E-mail is the most important business application today. Are you doing enough to make sure you're getting yours?
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
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