Ask HN: Why don't you respond to emails? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why don't you respond to emails?

3 pointsmassarog4 comments

Being an entrepreneur, over the past few years I've sent out hundreds if not thousands of emails to businesses, clients, etc. Especially when launching a new business and you begin to reach out to people, the response that you get back is usually pretty terrible.

Now that I am on the other side of the spectrum and have been in business for over 3 years and get 25-50 emails a day, I still always respond to people, even though it may take a few days. I get all types of emails, business opportunities, support requests, pitches, etc. and I still respond, even with a polite 'Sorry, but I'm not interested at this time'. I personally think it is just rude to ignore people if it is a legitimate e-mail and not just pure spam.

My question to HN is, why don't you personally respond to your emails (if you don't)? Do you feel that it is rude to not respond to people who are waiting (and hoping) to hear back from you?

For me it's a volume/time issue.

Responding to every email simply isn't scalable for one person. So either you hire someone, or you stop responding to every email. 25-50 emails/day sounds manageable, but is it manageable with 100 emails, 300 emails?

True, but then how do you expect to be reached via email if your account is public and everyone knows to email you there? The way I keep it manageable is by keeping my personal email private (for the most part) and putting a business email out there for everyone else to send an email to.

For me, most of my "lack of response" issues come from thinking I will respond and then forgetting.

If I'm not careful about making notes/reminders to go back and respond to people it's very easy to just forget.

I would suspect that this is the reason for a lot of people, which is why a follow up email isn't being pushy. At least not the first time or two.

My problem may come from having the OCD of the inbox, or the need to keep it at zero at all times. I feel that most people just have thousands and thousands of emails in their inbox and there is no organization aspect to it so they truly just forget to respond. For me, I'll know I haven't responded if your email is sitting in my inbox :).

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