So, you get too many forwarded e-mails, do you?

A problem

Each day mothers, daughters, fathers and sons, friends and associates, someone you know, like or love are forwarding to you e-mails you didn’t ask for and/or in which you have no interest.

How do you nicely ask them to stop?

I recommend that you explain that you would appreciate being removed from their personal lists of forwards. Use the excuse you have e-mail overload and really only want to receive e-mails that are personally written from them to you.

Unfortunately, there is no nice way. No matter how “nice” you may be, many folks will take your request personally and get upset or mad. No matter how nice, how kind, how thoughtful you may be in asking someone to stop forwarding these “forward to everyone you know” e-mails the forwarder will either have hurt feelings, get downright belligerent in the belief that they can do what they want and/or completely disregard your request and keep on forwarding.

Hence, this intel. If you are a concerned site visitor in this dilemma, you can review and send the following rules to those who keep forwarding everything under the sun and refuse to see the importance of your request to stop.

See, the problem isn’t really the forwards. It is how they are forwarded. Although the forwarders may believe they are being thoughtful, in fact they are being proportionately the opposite because they are not forwarding properly.

3 Rules for forwarding e-mails

If one wants to be truly thoughtful, all one has to do is stop and think of the person on the other side - not just what you want to do. The three critical issues here are:

1. Forwarding to everyone in your address book. You can bet that everyone will not be interested in the topic of that e-mail. So you need to take the time to choose who you forward to because you know they will be interested.

2. Not including a personal comment to the person the e-mail is being forwarded to. Now, that certainly isn’t very thoughtful! If you cannot type a brief comment to the specific person you are forwarding to about why you are forwarding them that specific e-mail, then don’t forward it at all.

3. Forwarding jokes and non-business related e-mails to another’s business email address. This isn’t appropriate. These type of e-mail should only be forwarded to personal addresses still taking into consideration number one and two above.

To all the thoughtless or naive uncontrollable forwarders out there, if you get asked by someone to not forward future e-mails, kindly respect their request. Don’t get hurt feelings and certainly don’t act like you have a right to disregard someone’s legitimate desire to not get e-mails they have no interest in receiving.

Know that those who make these requests still want to hear from you - they just don’t have the time or their e-mail volume is such that extraneous forwards about silly, political or humorous topics that they are not interested in are what they no longer want to receive. This includes those chain e-mails no matter how noble the cause may seem - it’s probably hooey to some people.

If you are sending unasked for forwards to everyone on your list, without comment, maybe you should be more genuinely thoughtful by being selective about what you forward and to whom. A good rule of thumb is, if an e-mail says “forward to everyone you know, all your friends or everyone in your address book,” it is best you just hit Delete.

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