How to Banish those Reply-All Email Explosions

Photo by Gregg O'Connell on flickr

In a previous blog post Keeping Control of your Inbox I mentioned that using the Reply-All button can actually add to your own inbox jam. It's the easy option to select, and indeed the laziest - why think about who the email needs to go to, when you can reach everyone with one click? Besides, who cares if the others aren't interested?

Of course this backfires when others then use the Reply-All button after you do, and it's not long before you get the "explosion".

So here's a great way to limit the Reply-All Email Explosions, but like all things you do have to do a bit of work yourself. The trick is to use a targeted recipient list and then subsequently forward a separate copy of your message to a secondary list of people who "also need to know". If a member of either list uses Reply-All, they'll only hit other members of their own list, and not the other one.

As an example, suppose your report has to go to Alice, Bob and Claire for review and update, but you also need to copy in Dave, Ella and Frank so that they know that the report has been submitted. You could email all 6, but in the event of a Reply-All button hit by any of them, others will be spammed. Also, it might be better for Dave, Ella and Frank to not see the report until after the update phase, and comments at this time might be unhelpful.

Instead, you email Alice, Bob and Claire, attaching the report. Next, you go to your Sent Items folder, and forward a copy of the email you've just sent, to Dave, Ella and Frank, optionally removing the report if appropriate. Both groups now have the information they need, and any use of the Reply-All button will be limited to the groups themselves.

Of course, there's nothing to stop, for example, Ella emailing Alice, Bob and Claire and copying you in, but that's a process which requires a deliberate thought process rather than an automatic response to click a button.

Try it for yourself and see how well it works for you.

Keeping Control of your Inbox

For some time now I've implemented a very basic form of email management. The core component of this was a simple configuration change I made several years ago - I reduced the frequency at which my email client checks for new messages on the server. I did this because I found that I'd be in the middle of dealing with one email, when others would turn up, creating an inevitable distraction.

I found that a polling interval of around 15 minutes worked well, especially in a very busy environment. These days at my (more relaxed) home office I have it set to 5 minutes, but I've found a problem recently.

It's been caused by my phone. Having finally upgraded to a smart phone, I now get email notifications almost immediately, which has the effect of undoing my basic management. So every now and then, I'll consider switching off the phone email notifications, and rely on the PC. Like in the old days.

Here are some other ideas that can, either individually or in combination, help you to manage that inbox:

Filter by Receiving User Name

If you have your own domain, set up individual email addresses for each mailing list that you subscribe to. This allows you to do two things. Firstly, you can easily write incoming mail rules to process these messages - depending on how busy you are, you might want to route them immediately to another folder to look at later. Secondly, if one of the services you subscribe to has its mailing list hacked (as if that would ever happen) you'll know immediately which one it is - and can act accordingly by updating your filter rules to accept the message only if it is FROM who it is supposed to be from (get this information from a legitimate message).

This approach also comes in handy for dealing with messages from Twitter, or LinkedIn. If you've set your Twitter email address to be, for example, twitter@myco.com, you can write filter rules to process these directly into a folder to skim through later when you have more time. You might want to make an exception for direct messages though - just check the message subject for "has sent you a direct message on Twitter".

Filter by Sending User Name

You can filter either by the person sending, or the company they work for, based on your current priorities - for example, if you have a client project nearing a critical milestone, you could flag all incoming emails from that company as soon as they come in, so that they stand out on your screen.

Filter by Topic

This works in a similar way, but you do have to write rules based mainly on the subject line - which can be notoriously variable due to differing uses of wording, abbreviations, spelling, and mistypes.

Maintain Multiple "Outstanding" Folders for Different Projects

This is something I've been doing for quite some time, especially as I am often involved in voluntary projects for not-for-profit organisations - when emails come in relating to these whilst I'm in the middle of fee-paying work, it makes sense to defer them and store them all up for reading and acting on in one single session.
A dedicated folder is ideal for this, and naming them "0utstanding" rather than "Outstanding" i.e. with a zero rather than the letter O, keeps them at the top of my folder list.

Limit Your Use of the "Reply All" Button

As Eileen Brown points out in a recent blog post, Reply All emails make you less productive, so it's worth asking yourself each time you go to click that button if it's really something you want to do - how much will you be adding to your inbox by doing so?