Sleep Better With Email Return Receipts

"I got it..."

I make websites for people. Lots of people. In my job, that means I get email. Lots of email. I receive on average 200 emails a day. So among other things doing my job well means doing email well. I read, sort, filter, organize, prioritize, and respond promptly to my email. But one thing I no longer do is reply to an email to say that "I got it" by default.

Why, you ask? Firstly, because I get far too much email. Secondly, there has been a perfectly good solution for this concern for a very long time. Read on.

Understandably, new clients of mine are excited about the new project and don't want anything to get messed up by email errors. So naturally they want to make sure I've gotten everything they send. This article is for you :)

I feel, appreciate and understand your concern. But this makes us both work hard at making sure our communications went through. Is there a better way? You bet!

Have no fear! It is called a Return Receipt. It can not only save you sleep and worry, but it can provide an invaluable record of whether/when your mail was read, should the need (as in legal) arise. For this reason you will notice that all of my mails have return receipt requests.

How it works

1.

Nearly every email client out there will allow you to select "request return receipt" while composing an email message. Details for your specific client can easily be found by searching Google for "request return receipt Outlook", replacing 'Outlook', by your actual mail client.

2.

On the other end, when a user reads a message that has a return receipt request, they are given the option to send it or not.

3.

If the receipt is sent, the requester is told when he message was read.

4.

If the message is deleted but not read, some mail clients will automatically send a "Deleted but not read" message to the sender