I continue to be frustrated when sending business and personal
correspondence by email. Sometimes, I never receive a reply or even a
confirmation that the email was received. Then I end up following up in person
or by telephone to see if they did receive it. Is there a polite way to ask
someone to please confirm receipt even if they do not have time to compose a
reply? Why don’t email programs allow us to confirm that a sent mail was
received or read? Etiquette might not be your specialty, but I thought you might
be able to help.
In this excerpt from
Answercast #59, I look at ways to request a read receipt for email.
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Email etiquette
You’re right. Email etiquette, or etiquette in general, is certainly not my
specialty, but I certainly am not short of opinions on a subject like this as
well!
First of all, let me answer that last part first, “Why don’t email programs
allow us to confirm things?” You know, they used to. Once upon a time, it was
possible and in fact, many programs still have the option to request what’s
called a “Received receipt” or a “Read receipt.”
What that intended was that when the email was opened by the recipient, an
email would automatically get sent back to you confirming that the email’s been
opened and/or read.
Privacy and spam
Now that is disabled in 99.9% of all email programs. People will almost
always turn it off or say no if asked, because many people consider it an
invasion of privacy.
But worse, spammers are using it. Spammers would send out spam with a read
receipt requested. As a result, if the program that the recipient was using
responded to the read receipt, spammers would realize that this email address
that they just used was actually a real person. As a result, that email address
would get a bucket load more spam.
So, a read receipt from a technological point of view? This kind of
confirmation that you’re looking for from a purely technological point of view…
honestly, it’s not gonna happen.
Blame the spammers for the most part but also understand that many people do
consider it somewhat of a violation of their privacy.
Polite request
Now, with that technical discussion out of the way: if it’s important, I
actually just include a polite statement at the end of the email saying, “Hey,
even if you can’t reply, could you let me know you got this? Thanks!” and then I
signed the email. That’s the only way I know.
Does it work? I have no idea.
Some people do. Some people don’t. Obviously, it would be polite for them to
at least acknowledge it, but the best you can hope for is that at least you’ve
asked them. It’s the only solution I know of to a problem like this. That’s why
it really does fall into the bucket of etiquette rather than technology because
as we’ve seen, the technology-based solutions for this are doomed to failure as
well.
All we can really do is quite literally, as you suggested, politely ask them
as part of the message, “Hey, could you let me know that you’ve seen this even
if you don’t have time to reply?” That’s about the best I can come up
with.
End of Answercast #59 Back to –
Audio Segment
The problem is, sending me an email may be an imposition. Certainly I may see it as such. Asking for me to confirm that I have seen it, is a further imposition.
On a personal level, if we’re friends, I will confirm that I’ve seen it or be prepared to cause an issue.
On a business level I would *NEVER* confirm receipt, if I didn’t in any case wish to reply.
If your commmunication is such that you feel you’re owed a reply, then call me. Don’t send me an email and dump the communication care responsibility on me.
Download and install the free:”MSGTAG” program,turn it ON BEFORE you send an email and you will get a message when your email has been opened.
By default, one can assume the message has been delivered; if it has not, you will be getting a notification to such effect.
Whether the recipient has read the message, fast, slow, once, repeatedly, attentively or absent-mindedly, will have been seen from the reply, if any.
And, true enough, if there is true urgency involved, use the phone, not email.
14-Oct-2012
i want some of my email recipients to know i want to know if they got mine, so i put my email address in the “cc”, this means i get copy thus almost certain they did too,,,,,,,
however, if i do this with email on business or the like then my recipient knows i am saving a copy for when i take his sorry butt to court etc….
naw, just kidding i dont take friends to court, just idiots….