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E-Mail Is Not Dead

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I have been hearing lately some claims, online and offline, that e-mail is dead. Some ultra-hip articles, visionary thinkers and other similar sources have their periodical prophecy on the matter.

Well, I don’t see it their way. I don’t believe them, neither should you. People still spend at least half their workday dealing with e-mail, and I’m not talking about a particular region of the world. Where there is office work and business in general, there is e-mail.

Why? people trust it. People are generally satisified with it. You do not hear excessive rants about e-mail and its features and functionalities. E-mail just works. In fact, E-mail is not only “not dead”, it is evolving into a business power-tool. Of course it has its flaws, but this is the case of most online collaborative communication tools.

E-Mail: Still Growing Strong

I ran a sample survey asking people from different backgrounds (work background, marital status, different hobbies and occupations, etc.) which were the most effective collaboration channels that they are likely to use.

More than two thirds of them put e-mail as their number one mean of communication. Instant Messaging, Tele/Video Conferencing were amongst the other choices, but did in fact rank way behind.

What do they use e-mail for? Aside of the obvious communication purpose, e-mail is also used for archiving purposes, letting people save and organize important attachments. Why is e-mail evolving? One of the evolution signs is the fact that respondents did declare that they use e-mail for exchanging documents, sending information to groups, improving communication across time zones and for traceable accountability. E-mail was initially meant to be a tool allowing two individuals to communicate over the internet – the way we used to send letters by mail; things have changed.

How do people access their e-mail accounts? Computers (be it laptops or deskstations) still rank first, followed by mobile (only 15%), which is a weird figure, since more than 50% of the respondents confirmed having mobile access to their work inboxes. Explanation is that people still prefer to interact via e-mail from the comfort of their offices.

E-Mail: What Should Be Improved?

Workers spend lots of aggregate time dealing with e-mail. Most of these users, when asked, would like to see better search functions, especially when dealing with large databases, better document management.

There’s also lots of junk communication present in e-mails. however, only about 10% of it filters through spam and junk filters into work inboxes. When we try to compound an average yearly figure for e-mail received/user, we get an approximate figure of nearly 10.000 e-mails/year. Given that high volume, e-mail solutions/software providers should definitely focus on features to make users gain some efficiency: a 10% increase in embedded efficiency would buy back something close to two workweeks per year for every user.


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