Email – the Mail of the Present and Future

Can you remember when there was no email?  In my professional career, I cannot.  What I can remember is that email wasn’t as prevalent as it is today.  I can recall being an Administrative Assistant where all correspondence was handled via telephone and followed up by snail-mail.  These days, I can’t image doing business without email.  I can’t recall the last time I had a piece of hard copy correspondence in my in basket on my desk.  Are you kidding me – most coworkers don’t even have an inbox on their desk.

According to statistics (Brownlow, 2010), the most popular email websites as of December 2010 were AOL, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Hotmail.  Of course there are many more websites that offer email services.

Email definitely has its advantages (Shelly, 2010):

-     Faster delivery which in turns relates to faster responses

-     Reduced costs – what is a stamp these days 44 cents?  With email, as long as you have Internet connection, your emailing is unlimited.

-     You can view your email from anywhere that has Internet access.  No more waiting for the postal man to delivery or for you to get home to see if your mail is there.

-     Less paperwork to file and easier management of your emails (I will get into this in a little bit.

Most emails contain the same basic information.  They just appear differently.  Here are two examples of emails; one is AOL mail, the other is Gmail.  You will notice that they both contain the necessary features to effectively send and receive an email.

Of course, these are only a few of the features.  You can copy others (even bcc – blind carbon copy).  You can save as a draft to view later before actually sending.  You can attach files and pictures if you so desire.  The best thing is that you can manage your correspondence by creating folders and filing your sent and received emails according to the subject matter or according to the sender or recipient. 

Email has many purposes.  Some people use it just for business, while others enjoy it for social purposes like keeping in touch with others or sending jokes.  What is your purpose for emailing? 

References

Brownlow, Mark 2010

      Email and Webmail Statistics, Retrieved 5 March 2011 from

      http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statistics.htm

Shelly, Napier, Rivers  Discovering the Internet  2010

      Course Technology, Cengage Learning, Boston, Massachusetts