As I write this blog in June 2024, many government professionals, contractors, suppliers and even home users continue to complain that their inboxes are overflowing and/or out of control.
In extreme cases, I have seen friends and colleagues delete their entire email accounts and start over with a new one.
Others use various tools and tricks to find the important items.
Even when you follow the instructions contained in emails, frustrations do not end but often grow.
Or, when you answer an email to provide one of the three options given as to why you have not responded to the other four emails they sent in the past month, they don't leave you alone.
Rather, you feel as if you are almost the victim of online stalking as this person starts to send social media and/or phone messages.
What I mean by that is that private-sector employees are seeing just as many emails as public-sector employees.
Some may think generative artificial intelligence will come to the rescue, but GenAI is also being used to create and perfect these emails being sent, so a bit of an email battle is going on.
This is a hard question to answer, because no matter what proper etiquette is used by most email marketers, I do not have the time or desire to read and respond to what you are offering en masse.
I have a day job to do, and it is not to help you sell your latest whatever.
For example: Emails offering me awards will be deleted.
That being said, I do pay attention to people I really know, as well as companies I know and respect.
Send a genuine email from a real person who is verified.
Most unsolicited emails end up in the spam folder, but real relationships from trusted people are read and often addressed appropriately.
This means meeting real people at conferences, events, business meetings and other business situations prior to sending emails.
I am not going to fall for your mass-marketing technique 99.999 percent of the time.
As I have said in this blog and numerous times around the world at conferences, we need to build trust, and keep human trust in a zero-trust world.
Daniel J. Lohrmann is an internationally recognized cybersecurity leader, technologist, keynote speaker and author.
This Cyber News was published on securityboulevard.com. Publication date: Sun, 02 Jun 2024 11:13:10 +0000