Email away messages: liven them up!

March 12, 2007 / Filed under: Email, Personality

Recently I was out of the office for a couple of days, and decided to post an "away message" (aka: vacation auto-responder). Usually I hate away messages, because I always seem to get random ones, from people I don't even know. Also, away messages are hardly "personalized." Instead, they just sound like the computer talking to me.

"I am out of the office until Monday ... blah blah blah. Please contact blah blah blah for any requests. ..."

So boring. Let's provide some enthusiasm, people!

Anyway... I think away messages are useful in some situations, so I went ahead and set one up for my work email only.

Since I tend to be empathetic towards others, I decided to include this line at the very beginning of my away message:

I apologize if you are receiving this by accident.

I know some people received it by accident, so I'm glad I put that there.

It's not entirely personalized, but it gives my away message a little "human touch," rather than jumping right into the typical drone.

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