A software company that I use just notified me that major mailbox providers like GMail, AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo changed their e-mail policy recently. These e-mail service providers are now tracking what they call “engagement” which is how long a message is read, if the links within it were clicked, and if a message was deleted without opening it. For those of you who have signed up for my Newsletter E-Mail List Subscription it could threaten future receipt of these emails.
Here’s what they’re doing. When they detect no engagement they block future messages. This means that if you do not take action on emails that you’re receiving and click on the links within these e-mail messages you receive, YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS WILL EVENTUALLY BE REMOVED and you will not receive anymore messages from those people or companies that you have been receiving e-mails from. I read that and was like… WOW, you’re kidding me right? I know I agree… I think it stinks too.
Have you signed up for newsletters like my Newsletter E-Mail List Subscription or Blog Post Notification, or from companies that you know and trust, or for that matter from friends and loved one? If you want to make sure that you will continue to receive these emails then here’s what this means for you and I. It means that in order to MAKE SURE we continue receiving emails from those people and companies you know and trust, that we definitely want to hear from, we must ENGAGE. Remember they’re actually tracking how long we spend reading an email, if we clicked any links within it, or if we just deleted it without reading it, and who knows what else.
Since my inbox is definitely larger than it should be I plan on spending 10-15 minutes a day weeding through it and cleaning it out. It’ll take some time but doing this should also prevent these email service providers from blocking future messages being sent to me. Honestly, this is something that I should’ve been doing all along but got lazy and haven’t been doing on a consistent basis. I always try to find a silver lining and guess even this one has one… it’s forcing me to deal with my ever growing inbox.