poingology: Email: Domination, Fatal Weaknesses and a Solution

Consider the following:

· In 2003, the annual flow of e-mails worldwide was 667,585 terabytes. (UC Berkeley's School of Management, How Much Information)

· Email volume in the United States is projected to nearly double from 1.5 trillion in 2003, to 2.7 trillion in 2007 (eMarketer)

· US Workers receive an average of 56 e-mail messages per day. (The Microsoft Office Personal Productivity Challenge, March 2005)

"The Internet has gone from novelty to utility for many Americans," says Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "They are beginning to take it for granted, but they can't imagine life without it."

Excerpts (with permission) from the groundbreaking “Email at Work Survey”, by the Pew Internet & American Life Project:

“Email stands out as a time saver: In this study, an overwhelming number of work emailers, 86%, report that email saves them time. “

Email has brought changes to the workplace

“Almost two thirds of work emailers (63%) found email to be the most effective means for making arrangements and appointments… an instant advantage in national or global companies for keeping far-flung employees in the loop… a godsend for last-minute round-ups or heads-ups.”

“Workers have seen in email a wonderful tool and have
stretched its uses well beyond its humble beginnings, although with sometimes clumsy results. The software industry, taking cues from users, has adapted the email software to meet user needs in a more elegant manner.

The inevitable impact of this revolution will be to lighten email load, moving some correspondence out of inboxes, either onto the Web or into associated applications.”

Power Emailers

"We got a sense from our data and from our interviews that there is a small group of work emailers who are different from all the rest.
We identified a group we call “power emailers’ – those who handle the highest volumes of email (typically more than 30 and often more than 50 messages a day). The power emailers represent about 20% of all work emailers."

The Profile: Power Emailers

"Demographically, power emailers belong to the workforce elite. The majority (59%) are college educated or beyond. They are high earners; over half of them (52%) live in households that earn at least $75,000 per year, including a third (32%) of all power emailers who live in households earning at least $100,000 per year. Two thirds (66%) of power emailers work as professionals, managers, or executives.”

Trouble in Paradise
All is not completely rosy in the fast-paced world of email. Work emailers are increasingly bombarded by spam, multiple copies of conversation threads and sheer volume of emails. A sampling of the email-related pain workers are feeling:

Coping with Email Overload
David Ludlow, Network IT Week

“Statistics say that 33 per cent of email is useless, 66 per cent of companies have a spam problem, 52 per cent of users waste hours each year dealing with their email, and 29 per cent of cat owners are more likely to get junk mail. The analyst reports say it all. But how do they tell us? Through email.”

CNN: E-mails 'hurt IQ more than pot'
Email Overload Makes You Stupid

"Research from King's College London University has found "the IQ of those who tried to juggle messages and work fell by 10 points -- the equivalent to missing a whole night's sleep and more than double the 4-point fall seen after smoking marijuana."

Parsing the Problem

Email has become the universal funnel. Due to its ease and utility, that funnel has become quite filled. The problem is no longer the supply or availability of information. Now the question is… what to do with it?

Spam filters and “white lists” do an adequate job of rejecting unwanted email. Email software can identify and link conversational threads, helping to organize a cluttered inbox. Email software with text search capability allows users to find needles in a haystack of communications.

The missing link: Task Management

A simple, powerful, universal solution: The Poingo Bounceback Server

The Poingo Bounceback Server simply returns any email you send, back to you at the time interval you specify.

For example, if you send, copy, or blind copy your email to 1d@poingo.com, that email will return to you in one day (1d). It works also for weekly and monthly intervals (1w@poingo.com and 1m@poingo.com, for example). Intervals up to 1 year are supported.

Address your email to the Bounceback Server with interval in the address

Address, copy, or bcc (blind copy) your email to interval@poingo.com. Your email will bounce back to you at that interval.
This example shows an interval of 10 days (10d)

Virtual Tickler System
Users who add this additional addressee to their email are essentially entering their email into a virtual tickler system with only a couple of keystrokes. This enables the user to easily manage hundreds of business or personal transactions, programming each for customized follow-ups, completely within their workflow, with negligible additional work.

Each business transaction stream has a life of its own. A sales initiative might require a two-week follow-up with another one month later. Tracking shipments might require weekly follow-ups. Marketing tasks might require tracking daily.

The Poingo Bounceback Server allows the user complete control over the customization of each follow-up program.

Important Tasks Come to You Daily
Users find their “bounced-back” emails in their inbox the morning of the day it was requested, allowing them to stay current with all tasks requiring action at that particular time, whether days, weeks or months later. When they execute the desired follow-up, they often elect to send a copy again to the Bounceback Server for continued tracking.

Daily reminders in your inbox.

This deceptively simple idea has the potential for viral, inexpensive growth. We envision a time in the very near future when “Poingoing an email” will be as meaningful as “Googling” a topic.

“Hey, I really need to remember to call about that. I will ”Poingo” it for 2 weeks from now.”

This is not a pipedream. At Builders Architectural, a $20 million construction company located in Deerfield, IL the Bounceback Server has been in use for almost two years and has handled thousands of bouncebacks. Users are fanatical. Once they get into the habit, they rely heavily on it on a daily basis.

Fulfilling Needs

Email Overload: By providing a safe, reliable place to store future task-related emails, the Bounceback Server allows users to remove them from cluttering their mailbox until they are needed. Users have an additional choice when a new email comes in. In addition to deleting, responding or filing, they can now “Poingo”.

Task Management: Most work tasks are eventually discussed in an email. When such emails are incoming, they can simply be “Poingo-ed” for future action. Or users can request action from others in an outgoing email and copy the Bounceback Server. Workers can also generate new emails with to-do items and send them only to the Bounceback Server for later action. This is essentially a self-addressed reminder.

High Efficiency: Other task management systems involve adding tasks into a separate software application, and many keystrokes are required to create a task for follow-up. Bounceback Server users can create a follow-up reminder in as little as one keystroke.

How to create a follow-up with one keystroke? User enters frequently used intervals in his address book; let’s say 2w@poingo.com. If his email system auto completes the addressee, user need only type “2”, and the rest of the address will appear. You can’t get more efficient than that!

Brain Overload: Since the original email is the carrier for future the follow-up reminder, the original message content is 100% preserved, making seamless continuation of the project easy. The user does not need to refer to other documents to get “up to speed”. He opens the reminder email, and the original information appears. This clean functionality is very easy on tired, overloaded minds.