How do you engage with visitors emails?

Question specially relevant to those managing hobby (authority) websites

[explorador]

Hi webmasters, like many around here I first started with a hobby website and grew to some more, still have them and these are still relevant. I never meant to make business with them but eventually I did and they became profitable. Sure things change. In the past, many years ago I used to receive many emails per day/week, some were congratulating my work, many were asking questions. I tend to believe: if the visitor sends and email to ask a question, this could mean several things, like:

1. You don't have that relevant content and so you need to listen in order to expand it in the direction they are guiding you to, because they need more specialized content
   
2. If you already have that kind of content and people still ask you directly, then your website is not clear enough

However I must add: people got increasingly lazy and somehow dumb, unable to deal with clear stuff, so probably those who send you specialized requests and questions might hint your niche has become contaminated with low reading comprehension/skills, and you might need to make changes, or just identify them and ignore them. This I'm saying received resistance years ago as many refuse to believe people are getting dumb, instead they think tech advances mean more brain usage and skills but that's sadly not the case, so after talking about this and receiving rejection, it took sometime for content creators to show signs of agreeing with the premise as they saw these signs themselves. I don't receive that many emails daily but mostly because I removed the contact forms from every page and specific sections, instead I'm using an advanced captcha system to filter people, and this is a discrete text indicating "click here if you want to send us a message", and amazingly many people fail (gladly) to see it, some don't even know it's there, and yes it's there, it's just a proof people are not reading. I did this because I was going nuts receiving stupid comments and stupid questions from the visitors. Smart people find this link quite easily and the quality of contact recovered.

Let's get back to the main question, how do you engage with reader's emails? do you ignore them? do you have some policy? I never ignored my visitors emails and many conversations evolved into business, this is not the case anymore, people usually write with a sense of entitlement that if you are an authority in some niche you must help them solve their questions and problems, for free, if not, you suck, oh I hope something better, blah blah. This is stupid, and many well-written emails that you answer are often received and show no feedback as "thank you", perhaps you reader are not as aware of this, perhaps you already are, but the entitlement grew out of proportions into thinking the web is absolutely free and everything must be free, because. So I'm about to decide NOT to reply to visitor emails, after all whatever I know about my hobby is already posted, and if it's not... then it's because it's not related, or it means generating free traffic for business that are not my friends and so that's why I don't list them. Being an authority hobby site doesn't mean you have to become a solve-all-visitor-needs, so I'm cool ignoring these emails.

[lucy24]

You've forgotten the category of: Uh, I have no idea but that's a really interesting question so let me look into it. I once got a reader question about a specific edition of {book that has an absolutely mind-boggling number of illustrated editions, many from the same publisher} and was sufficiently intrigued to go order an out-of-print hardcover book in hopes it would contain the answer. Happily it did--and also provided information on a wholly unrelated subject, which benefited me.

I once got a letter of generic praise from someone with the same surname as {exceedingly obscure author}. On inquiry, she turned out to be his granddaughter. Fun!

The one who asked if I could translate I-forget-which-obscure-book into Russian, on the other hand, was quietly ignored.

In short: If it would give you pleasure to answer the email, answer it. If not, don’t.

Tangential but not wholly irrelevant observation: When I have had it up to here with “do my homework for me” requests (mercifully most in the form of search-engine queries, not direct communications), it is gratifying to look at analytics and see that someone is really studying {well-known scholarly work}, skipping back and forth from the General Index to specific entries in various volumes. Contrary to what one sometimes suspects, not all our readers are idiots.

[tangor]

Then there is category

3. Too dumb to read what you have, just answer this because I'm too lazy to do the work myself...

Boils down to you can't always get what you want if you aren't actually looking.

Those kind of messages I ignore.

[londrum]

i always reply properly to them, even if they’re dumb questions or they’ve just been too lazy to find the info on the site. sure it can be annoying sometimes, but its usually only two minutes of your time and i figure these people are more likely to remember your site and return again if you actually responded to them.

the only emails i ignore are link requests, and spam people trying to sell stuff

…the ones that really wind me up (although i do still reply to them) are when they cant even be bothered to say hello, thankyou, or even write a proper question. they just send something like “prices”, and that word is literally the entire email

[explorador]

Lucy23: You've forgotten the category of: Uh, I have no idea but that's a really interesting question so let me look into it.

True, that's a good one.

@tangor, yes, that's part of what I meant, and removing the visibility of the contact links got rid of most if not all of those "visitors".

londrum: I always reply properly to them, even if they’re dumb questions or they’ve just been too lazy to find the info on the site. sure it can be annoying sometimes, but its usually only two minutes of your time and i figure these people are more likely to remember your site and return again if you actually responded to them

Exacly my personal approach for years, mostly because I love the topic, it's not just a hobby but a passion. As explained before many of this interactions turned into something else (quite positive, or business) but that was never my intention.

Yet...

londrum: the ones that really wind me up (although i do still reply to them) are when they cant even be bothered to say hello, thankyou, or even write a proper question. they just send something like “prices”, and that word is literally the entire email

This... has killed my interest on replying, mostly the one liners and the regret of answering "proper" mails that have a 0% of "thank you" return, that was never my experience in the past but slowly became the new standard. I do see it just takes 1-2 minutes of my time, but the results make it seem like more, and absolutely wasted time. I tried not taking this so seriously, but over time I couldn't shake the idea of "I better do something else with those 1-2 minutes".

[londrum]

whenever i get a blunt, short email, i think some of it might be explained by them typing it on their phone. people are used to sending text messages these days, which usually aren’t long, not like in the old days when you'd be writing an email at a keyboard and monitor.

i’ve heard that including your name and photo on a contact form helps to remind people that they're talking to an actual human being… a bit like those “can i help?” chat boxes that pop up on service sites with a picture of a staff member wearing a headset

[explorador]

The colliding concepts inside my mind originate from:
1. Repeated experiences where replying proved a waste of time, realizing a strong trend seeing the web as "free" and with entitlement.
2. Time invested with no return or benefit (not that I was looking for it, but not even thanks?), I actually have stuff to do.
3. My personal internalization with psychology concepts where I learned it's not always ok to do things without asking or expecting something in return, just giving is not something healthy from that angle.

@londrum, that's a great idea (name + photo). Suddenly I think something along the lines of "If you found this information helpful consider telling a friend about this website, by the way: this is owned and operated by real people with a passion about X topic".

[NickMNS]

a bit like those “can i help?” chat boxes that pop up on service sites with a picture of a staff member wearing a headset

LOL, humans! Those "boxes" are typically powered by chat-bots. Simple AI no human required.