E-mailGroup 2

Historical Context• E-mail started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to

communicate. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail • It is a more up to date method of transmitting data, text files, digital photos, and audio and video files

from one computer to another over the internet. This phenomenon did not become popular until 1990 and now it is a major business and personal communications.

• Email users create and send messages from individual computers using commercial programs or mail-user agents (MUAs). A lot of the email programs have a program that enables you to compose or write your own message to send. To send the message, the user has to specify the addresses. If the user were to send the message to more than one recipient, it is called broadcasting.

• The source of the destination is included in the address There are many different ways to write the email address depending on the email destination. For instance, an interoffice message distributed over an intranet, or an internal computer, may have a simple scheme such as the person's name as the address, followed by the symbol @, followed by the domain, the organization's name, and finally the country.

• Emails also contain headers and footers above and below the message. They usually state the senders name, email address, and the date that it was sent. A user then can store, delete, reply, or forward the message to others.

• most email programs allow you to attach files and photos to emails to send to others. This allows users to append large text- or graphics-based files, including audio and video files and digital photographs, to email messages.

• http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00047/email.htm   

An Alternative To Email

• Hand written letters• Fax• Telegrams• Texts• Instant messaging

However some of these methods are being less and less popular with people now hardly using them.

E-mail – The Target Audience

The Target audience for emailing may not be as wide as you may first think. There are many people who would not even consider using email as a form of communication. The majority of children under 10 and people aged 60 and over would probably not even know how to use E-mail as it a rather new piece of software and as only became popular in the mid 90’s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mailIn my opinion the target audience for E-mail is from young teenagers all the way up to late 40’s (13-49).

Benefits of Email

• It’s fast• It’s free• You can Attach documents• It’s easy to manage• It doesn’t take up physical space• They can be sent out to millions of people easily• They can be traced• They can be used at anytime

Drawbacks of E-mailing• They can be hacked• They can be traced• Other people can get access to them• If mistakes are made in the address then personal documents can leak out• The email "environment" is poor. Thanks to the spam avalanche, sorting through

email messages is a real drag. That means your prospects are looking for messages from colleagues, family, and friends, and everything else is out. And fast.

• Simple Terms – There is so much spam mail about that it takes up a lot of memory, so searching through your mail for your actual contacts becomes a hassle.

• Email messages have to be (relatively) short. When prospects are going through their email, they want information quickly. So long copy is out. Complex offers are out. Supporting facts and arguments are out.

• Emails limit your creativity. An all-text email is obviously visually quite boring. The message is the whole ball game. Even in an HTML email, you can throw in some colour and photography, but the look is never great. Let's face it. With email, your graphic designer is fighting with one hand tied behind her back.

• Simple Terms -E-mails are relatively boring, they are just plain and they simply carry texts and files, there is no way of making a trademark, because you cant use your signature on it.

• Great email lists are hard to find. Yeah. List brokers promise you a high-quality "opt-in" list but you're often playing with fire. The simple fact is that the direct mail list business is a lot more mature and you can find ethical and helpful list brokers if you shop around.

• (http://www.businessknowhow.com)

ImprovementsWays of improving E-mails would be the availability to• Have an auto manage system• Be able to put pictures into the physical E-mail itself, not

attatchments • Have an automatic spam filter that can be changed by the user

depending on what they want to filter. This would save a lot of space.

• Have an online attachment window, where you can see and test the attachment before you download it to your hard drive.

• In-depth improvement ideas:

http://www.charlwood.com/improving-email-delivery-rates.htm

Purposes of Email•In the blog, http://cw1101.blogspot.com/2008/02/email-has-purpose.html, post by Posted by Angie Belcourt at 2/14/2008 09:27:00 AM states that “I use e-mail every day and its purpose changes depending on whom I am e-mailing”.

•Angie, who works as a real estate closer, also writes that is very important to consider the tone of an e-mail on who she in sending the e-mail to, “I cannot use exclamation points or type anything in all capital letters because it sends a different tone and the recipient may think that I am angry or being rude”.

•On the other hand Angie says that when she e-mails members of her family for example her sister or mum about gardening tips her e-mails will be much more “casual” and have a completely different purpose to when she is at work.

How email works

• Email works on a ‘store and forward’ basis, in which messages sent are stored on a server until they are requested by the recipient.

• Messages are sent by an email client, linked to an account with an email provider.

• Every account has an address linked to it, comprised of a username, and a domain name, in the form username@domainname.

• When a message is sent, the client formats the message in SMTP form, and sends it to the local Mail Transfer Agent.

• The MTA then requests the address of the appropriate Mail Exchange (MX) server from the Domain Name Server of the recipient’s domain (the part of the address after the ‘@’).

• The DNS server sends the MTA the address of the MX server.

• The MTA then sends the message to the MX server, ready to be delivered.

• The message is then delivered to the recipient when they request any new messages.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email