Making bacn more useful Sep09 '08

Email was meant for direct person-to-person (or person-to-group) communication.

However, too often it's used as a notification platform - anything from social networking sites, banking sites, and online forums or groups use email to "notify" you of the latest activity or updates involving you.

The term for this type of email is bacn. It's not necessarily spam, but the next level up.

I don't mind bacn that much because most networks or services allow you to turn off the notifications to some degree. However, for the notifications I do receive, they can quickly become useless if there is not enough information included.

Liven up your bacn!

Much like livening up your email away messages, your email notifications should be livened up as well!

Too often I open a typical bacn message and find nothing inherently useful in it. Perhaps there's a brief sentence or two about what "activity" or "update" just occurred, and maybe a link to the relevant site. But that's usually all. Such a waste of real estate!

Twitter

Here's an example email notification from Twitter, informing me of a new follower:

Screenshot of Gmail message

Great, so I know this person is following me. And I can click a link to their Twitter profile. Woop-dee-do.

How about including some more information? Maybe that person's last 10 Twitter updates? How about listing some of their followers, whom I also follow? Their Twitter bio and location?

This would all help to inform me right in my email program, without having to physically go to the site.

AT&T

Here's a recent email notification from AT&T, informing me that my bill is ready to be paid:

Screenshot of Gmail message

What purpose is this email serving, other than providing me a link to the site? Why not share some bill details, like how much I owe? Or perhaps my voice and data usage for the month. You're making me do extra work by having to go to the site, log in, navigate to the billing section, etc. Save me some steps.

Laziness

If you're running a web product or service, your email notifications are just as important as your actual web site. It's just another "face" for your company. So you should put on your best face, any time you're being seen by customers, members, etc.

It seems out of pure laziness, companies don't want to invest a lot of time in their "email presence," but I think it's a golden opportunity to really extend your influence.

After all, if it has to be bacn, it might as well be useful.

Categories: Email

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I think you make a good point, that notification type emails are still stuck in 1999, and could be richer. As long as you have a captive reader, g ... Read more.

Matt, I enjoyed your take on bacn and the current state of mass-email. While I'm not too confident in companies improving their application ... Read more.

matthom is published and produced by Matt Thommes - an independent publishing enthusiast, mobile blogger, content creator, informative writer, web developer from Chicago. Never one to conform, Matt intends to promote the effect the web has on our lives, in an effort to intensify, instruct, and clarify all that is happening around us.