You wouldn’t think that Hotmail users can teach you much about email management – after all, the service has been around for many years and was one of the first Webmail products – but there are some interesting insights on Microsoft’s What’s Your Inbox Like blog that splits you into one of three basic types of email users: filers, pilers and deleters.
Filers like to file their received messages into folders, almost immediately upon receipt, either by using automated filers or doing so manually to about 45% of their messages. This is the group that knows how to use the various features of Hotmail, such as vacation replies and keyboard shortcuts.
Deleters are those of us that almost immediately get rid of messages upon arrival, to the tune of 80% of them, and 30% of their messages are deleted without even being read (I am definitely a deleter). We want our inboxes tidy and like a task list of items to be accomplished today.
Finally, there are pilers, as in piling things on. More than half of these messages stick in their inboxes, being pushed down into the invisible past and forgotten. These users don’t want to hear no stinkin’ tools or shortcuts, they are just content to know that somewhere in their inbox is a message that they once cared about. But about a third of the time these folks feel they lost a message, even though it is stored back there on April 13 when they actually got it delivered.
Of course, if you are like me and don’t really use any of your Microsoft-provided email accounts for anything meaningful other than to sign in to numerous MS-sponsored services, you are probably skewing the results. They have me down as a piler because I so seldom visit that particular inbox.
