I'm also perfectly happy to use my email as a notification zone, as it's probably the one place online where I will absolutely definitely 100% receive whatever message I'm sent.
With regards to the emails themselves, I'm actually almost against the kind of personalisation that the author here is recommending. "Hey, Jim, your tweet got retweeted!"
Yes, very impressive, you worked out how to insert a merge field. How could I possibly have known the message was for me if you hadn't put my name at the top there? I suddenly feel so very engaged.
I just think it's a bit disingenuous, almost a little dishonest, to try and pretend that an email update from a company is actually a letter written to you personally by some guy who works at said company.
The yes-please-reply@ address is a nice gimmick, but if you're sending messages to this address and receiving no response then what makes you think anyone's reading them at all?
What I'd really like is a single online notification service. I imagine signing up for a service somewhere, and I just plunk my special notification address somewhere in the settings. The service then communicates to that online notification service instead of sending me emails. I could install an app on my phone and desktop (separately configurable) that alerts me. I can set up filters through the app or a web interface.
I'm not too hopeful about this ever happening though. No service will support it unless it's mainstream, and using the notification service is useless until most services support it. Chicken and the egg.
Everything you say about this sounds exactly like hosted email to me. How is it different?
To me, the problem with email is the time it takes to manage it: filter, mark as read, etc. Gmail filters help with this, but it's still work. But I can't see how any notification system could know how I want things filtered without me telling it.
The guy has "thousands of unread items in my inbox" that he will never get to.
His priority inbox has 26 unread messages of which only 9 are directed to him (others are mailing list, sent by a machine whatever that means and newsletters).
I presume his "normal inbox" has the same ratio of email "from machines" and directed to him directly since there is no reason to be any other way.
To me this paints a picture of a person who does not take care of his inbox and he wants me to send an email to him? Really? That guy wants to "talk to me" and he wants to get an email from me, presumably so he can write a blog post about having thousands of emails in his inbox? Nope, I don't get it.
Derek Sivers / CDBaby has been doing something similar, adjusting the From:-field to include the customer first name: "CDBaby loves Sarah" for shipment confirmations. As reported, people loved this kind of mails (thinking that somebody at CDBaby changed their email profile settings for each outgoing mail :-)
We (Bizen.com) send SMS notifications to our customers. If they respond to the SMS, it is directed to their account manager.
For example, you may have a million twitter followers who create minimal interaction. Or have a face to face meeting with one person who introduces you to an interested angel or your next big customer.
What has biggest impact?
It shouldn't be a case of offline or online. Do both until you can't. Then start optimising.
I often see organisations cut-off e-mail feedback long before the noise from spammers, auto-replies, vacation mail, etc. becomes an actual issue.
Wait until you have a problem. Then look at the many tools around that can help alleviate those problems. Then think about maybe recruiting more people to help deal with the feedback. Then - if you still have a problem - start thinking about removing communication channels.
It should be the last option - not the first.
