Discuss:how much time-effort do you invest on the emails from readers?

What's your approach regarding the emails-messages entering your site?

[explorador]

Hi there fellow webmasters, I really would like to read your comments on this. I have several sites, from one selling some stuff and the majority sharing information and doing well with advertising. I'm passionate about my niche and that's why I enjoy it.

Lately I've been receiving a lot of emails asking me questions. I would like to hear your opinions on this.

Most of the questions being asked are already answered on the website, visible and linked. I discussed this on another thread as why people don't read as they used to in the past. My content has been there for years and I used to receive many thanks for the info posted, now nothing has changed but people only seem to use search engines, find and then write a question (lazy readers) and hit "send". I'm afraid of a change or increase of "kinda poor traffic quality".

My approach to this is to reply "hi blah blah thanks as for your question, the answers are there on the article where you sent this message from blah blah thanks, best regards...". Sometimes I reply with the links to the content but recently I began ignoring those mails, why? from 10 emails I answer, I get 1 "thanks". I wonder how much traffic, reputation or branding could I loose from mouth to mouth.

• I built a FAQ with lots of useful information and even contact info and still I get emails about "can you send me the contact info of...#*$!" I'm ignoring those emails now, websites are useful but my webs are not the yellow pages, sad thing is that info is already there. I feel I'm wasting my time.
  
  
• For other legit questions I'm taking in count the emails and instead of answering by mail I plan to create a page with the answer "reader Sir.[hidden]@[#*$!.com] ask us how to store the widgets", then I will send a mail with the link to the answer, this way I get one more visit from the same reader and get the attention of the other people already looking for the same answer.
  
  
• I've been seeing a pattern and interest from the readers, and from there a business opportunity. I'm not really interested but I'm seeing it as an option to offer a product in the future (the widgets they are so interested in) or perhaps to find an affiliate solution. I'm not so into this, perhaps you have a site of "the history of widgets" and you enjoy working on it but not a bit interested on manufacturing widgets for sale, or selling them on your website.
  

What do you do with such emails? some readers find more info on my sites than any other and from there think I'm some sort of official representation or organization, I even get complains from readers about "widget quality" as if I was involved. Please share how much effort you put on those emails (if any).

PD. I have a disclaimer on the contact page "we do not send free widgets, maps for widget land or schematics to build widgets, please don't ask for them" still people ask for them

[Jane_Doe]

I don't reply to most reader emails and say as much in my sites. It is low pay back writing a response for one person when I can spend the same amount of time adding revenue generating content to my sites that many people will read over the years. If people write a nice, appreciative email about a site I do try to thank them for that. But as far as answering questions I rarely reply to any of those emails anymore.

I get many questions that are answered right in the article people are writing about. Like if I had an article on how to get grass stains out of jeans with tens steps to try and 3 products to buy that might help, I'll still get emails that say "I have grass stains on my jeans, can you help me?" I mean I don't even know how to reply to those kinds of questions. What would I reply other than exactly what is in the online article? If they don't want to read the article, are they even going to bother reading my email reply anyway? I actually have had a number of people who sent me their phone numbers and want me to call them to chat.

I used to reply to most of the emails people sent me and it just got to be a fool's game over time as I developed more sites and the traffic on the older sites has grown. There's one of me and lots of them. I used to spend at least 2 weeks out of the year just answering email, even with using form letters as much as I could. I decided I'd rather spend those two weeks on a tropical beach somewhere with cucumber slices over my eyes, sipping mango Margaritas.

I do have FAQ question pages and I add to those based on the kinds of questions people send me. But for me the answer to your question on how much effort I put into email questions is very little. I think it is different if you have an ecommerce site but most of my sites are just informational sites.

[piatkow]

Most of the questions being asked are already answered on the website, visible and linked.

I run a site for a printed magazine and also deal with the print advertising. I have lost count of the number of people who phone me and ask me my postal address. The only place where my phone number is printed is next to my postal address!

In theory I like emails from readers (print or web) but in practice most are time wasters.

[LifeinAsia]

We get a lot of e-mails that sound like they are from 5th graders with an assignment due tomorrow- "Send me information on <very broad topic> ASAP." Rarely a please or thank you, and punctuation and grammar is usually lacking or non-existent. These get deleted without a response.

If it's a more specific question and politely written, I'll usually suggest posting their question (or searching for the answer) on our Discussion Boards, especially if it's an issue that would be of interest to a lot of people. If it's a quick answer and not of value to many people, I may respond personally.

[maximillianos]

Gmail has a nice feature called "Canned responses". We configure a number of such responses for most of our common email questions.

Even though we have an fAQ, we still get quite a few email questions. You can't really avoid it.

We do prioritize them though. Some lower priority questions may not get answered for days. But we have a process in place so they don't fall through the cracks.

[Jane_Doe]

We get a lot of e-mails that sound like they are from 5th graders with an assignment due tomorrow.

I actually had someone literally just send me his homework assignment once. It was an essay type question along the lines of "describe the influence of X on the X culture in the x century." He said he was sorry for the late notice but that it was due in something like two days so could I send him my reply right away.