When I send you an email, it’s meant to give you some info. I did not write within the email that you don’t need to respond but you take it upon yourself to simply ignore it. No one gets that much email. At my last full time job, I was sending and receiving nearly 400 messages a day and never let an email go more than 8 hours without responding to it. I was organized, had a system and never just let an email float out there without a response.
If I email your company and say, “I’d like you to give me one million dollars for being a loyal customer”, it would be respectful of you to at least respond and say, “That’s unrealistic. Have a good day.” You’ve responded and now we’re straight. Instead, I ask how things are going, offer you adspace on my site FOR FREE or simply ask about a new product and yet I get no response.
As proof of this ratio, at my old job (before I left) i had 30 thousand sent items in my outbox but my inbox only had 12 thousand messages. My DailyTechTalk mailbox that I totally emptied back in April has 3 thousand sent messages and 2 thousand in the inbox. (that excludes BACN). Why don’t you just respond for god’s sake?
I agree that not every email needs a response but when I bought an eBay item from you, email you looking for a freelance writing gig at your publishing company or looking to test out your new software that’s in private beta, just respond back with “no” or something like that. It’s not very hard. I want to try out your beta software but you don’t want me to so instead of ignoring that email, just say “no” and I’ll understand. It’s not that hard! I’ve never EVER ignored an email because I respect and understand that someone took the time to write a letter to me so they deserve to get a response from me. No matter how busy I get, that will always be the case and you can quote me on that.
I’ve worked for myself, small businesses with less than 20 employees and even Apple Computer as a manager at one of their retail stores and no one deserves the disrespect of sending an email and not getting a response. It’s rude and a big ef you to the sender.
What makes this epidemic of ignoring emails really tick me off is when I see someone in person that I emailed and when I bring up the email I sent a month ago that they didn’t respond to, they say, “yeah i got that but didn’t care or it wasn’t too important.” I bet if I sent you 10 thousand dollars over Paypal it would get opened immediately, wouldn’t it? I emailed someone in publishing that I respect, have interviewed and looked up to for years now asking if there are any internships at his publishing company. No response. I emailed a 2nd time simply asking if he got the message and nothing. It would take less than 5 seconds to say, “there’s nothing available. Good luck” but instead I don’t know if it got to him or not. For me, it’s now awkward when I see him out. Do I say hi or does he hate me now or something? When you don’t respond to an email, it’s telling me that we’re no longer on speaking terms and that’s what I feel.
Let’s stop this vicious circle and just respond to our freaking emails.
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4 Comments until now.
I think this should apply to all communique. Whether it be tweets, voicemails, texts, etc.
Yes Gerard. Some people really are “busy” but if you’re too busy to keep up with voicemails, email and other communications then hire an assistant.
Giving someone your cell phone number is not another way to blow someone off. It’s a way to communicate. If you don’t respect them enough to check your voicemails then why give your cell phone number out.
Don’t give someone that your email address if you have no intention of responding to their messages.
Agreed. It’s rude and disrespectful.
Great article Adam! I fee the exact same way! I respond to every email I get whether its deserving or not in my eyes.
I am sure many others feel the same way!
Damn you Adam. Now I feel guilty. I do this quite often at work, since sending a response seems to be redundant with a lot of my counterparts (telling them the same stuff they should already know). That being said, I’m bad at returning phone calls, which makes your point that much more profound to me. For starters, I’ll actually start answering my phone.
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