I have noticed an alarming trend in email lately; changing the subject in the body of the email without changing the subject line of the email. So, why is this a problem? For me personally, there are three primary reasons:

Reason One. I am trying to avoid the annoying email administrator emails that state, “You have exceeded your storage limit of emails, you will not receive another email until you reduce the size of your mess”. While I cherish the idea of no more emails, it is an important part of my job (secondary reason) and I am anticipating that email from my boss about that huge bonus he has for me (primary reason). To avoid the “administrator” lockdown from preventing the anticipated “bonus email”, I move all the emails I have read to my local hard drive.

Reason Two. I am trying to stay organized and maintain the ability to quickly find emails, regardless of how old they are. Believe this or not, some people ask me to do things in the ERP system and then forget that they asked me to do it! I do exactly as instructed in their email and then a year or more later, that same person will find my name stamped on the transaction. Having completely forgotten that they requested my action, an email is sent to their management stating, “Bob, the moron, was messing in the system again, he should be fired”. I don’t think there is a more satisfying activity than responding to the “Please Fire Bob” email with the original email requesting the change. I may be a moron, but I try very hard to be an organized moron. The really clever people use a completely unrelated email subject, like “Bob - You are really Great!” to request that I delete the latest $6M booking. Even a few days after filing this one, it is going to be hard to find (because I would have likely filed it in the “Bob deserves a huge bonus” folder).

Reason Three. If you are patient and sort your email by the subject line, you can read only the last email in the series, instead of the 15 or 20 emails that preceded it. Then you drag it and all the preceding emails into their appropriate folder on your hard drive. This can save hours per day. But what would happen if your boss, who works in corporate along side one of your peers says, “Hey, peer, tell Bob to give me a call, I need to talk to him” and the subject of the talk is that big huge bonus. But your peer sends you an email that says, “Hey Bob, call you boss, he wants to talk to you.” But the subject line is, “RE: Testing Commercial invoices in QAS 90045110 - SO 3000104″? This very important email gets dragged along with all the others of the same subject into the appropriate folder and the big huge bonus is gone. I have decided to abandon efficiency and read every email just in case the above situation occurs. I’m still reading and waiting…

Here is the exciting news: You can use this trend to your advantage (make a “bug” into a “feature”). Like me, I am sure you have noticed a second alarming trend, emails marked with “Importance: High” (that little exclamation point next to the email) are proliferating. There are so many emails marked this way, that when you add exclamation points to your emails, no one pays attention. Try this. Use a subject line like “Your huge bonus is ready for you to pick up” but then make the actual subject of the email the important message you need people to read. You will have to be creative, because each subject line is only going to work once and maybe twice for the most gullible people. To get your boss’ attention, you can use a subject like, “My Resignation Letter.” Be very careful with this one, it could have an adverse affect on that “huge bonus” email…

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