Tips of the Trade: Why you can’t rely on e-mail

Time and time again, it’s proven true: you can’t rely on e-mail and you can’t make assumptions. Those two things together are lethal.

When I first started working with Nicole, a Web designer, a couple of my e-mail messages never made it to her inbox. She didn’t think anything of it.

A month later, when she got around to contacting her service provider about it, she discovered that my messages weren’t the only ones missing. Many legitimate messages had been filtered as spam, including two from real live prospects to whom she’d submitted proposals, but never heard back.