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I get so many obnoxious emails in my inbox daily from people who assume that just because my email address is online and they’ve done *the literal bare minimum* in reaching out to me that I have to respond to them immediately. And if I don’t respond immediately then I get bombarded with emails for months until I do.
Almost daily I’ll receive an email around 8 or 9am pitching some new study or product and by noon I’ll already have a ‘Hey Cass, just wanted to make sure…’ email waiting for me.
I also get a ton of automated software emails where some person sends me a stock email with ‘Hey Cass…’ before pitching their service or product and that company’s computer will continue to send me an email almost daily until I respond, and more often than not there’s no way to opt out of these.
I’m not looking for pity. I’m just saying that I get a lot of annoying emails every single day of my life, including some guy who emailed me twice on Saturday to ask why I hadn’t responded to his unsolicited email yet.
I’m a bit of an expert when it comes to obnoxious emails so when I saw this information below it was very familiar. These are the 9 most annoying phrases anyone uses in emails. I see the top 2 almost daily.
Adobe ran a survey amongst 1,000 white collar workers to ascertain the most annoying phrases in emails and here’s what they came up. The number to the right of the phrase is the corresponding percentage of people who say that particular phrase is the most annoying.
I’ll be honest, only the first four really bother me. I don’t really have any problem at all with #’s 5 through 9.
1. Not sure if you saw my last email… 25%
2. Per my last email… 13%
3. Per our conversation… 11%
4. Any updates on this? 11%
5. Sorry for the double email 10%
6. Please advise 9%
7. As previously stated 9%
8. As discussed… 6%
9. Re-attaching for convenience 6%
I’m sure these are all industry specific. I receive #1-4 on a daily basis and thus those are the ones that tend to get under my skin the most.
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I also receive #5 pretty regularly but for some reason it doesn’t bother me because it usually pertains to multiple topics. If you’re double emailing within hours about the same topic (without a response) then you just need to chill.
I imagine if I worked in another field where I was working on large collaborative projects then #6-8 would probably drive me up the wall but for the most part, my job isn’t super collaborative throughout most of the year so I don’t have to deal with a constant barrage of emails with that phrase.
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If you’re reading this list and you see that you’re guilty of sending emails with those phrases then maybe, just maybe, consider changing your wording a little bit.