December 08, 2003

Automated Email Usability

We've been working on a project that will likely generate a good deal of automated email. The project, an online registration system, will fire off an email, at minimum, when the user signs up for a class and when the class is over. So, I was interested to see Jakob Nielsen's newest Alertbox column: Automated Email From Websites to Customers. The article, which also acts as an advertisement for Nielsen's latest report, does have some useful info. In short:


  • Choose a good from address and subject line.

  • Keep emails short, and infrequent.

  • Make sure you tell the users what they need to know.