Email Links Enhanced

Friday, February 8, 2008

Even in the web 2.0 world, often times the most cost effective way to set up a collaboration mechanism is an email distribution group. How often do you see:

For support contact THISAPPSUP. If you need permissions, send mail to THISAPPLEADS.

If you were really on the ball, you would set up a list or form that had all of the fields and pre-requisite questions, but I understand, sometimes that gets de-prioritized. However, there is something in between that is about as easy as posting the above, but makes it so much easier for you and the user contacting these aliases.

It's our old friend MailTo.

If nothing else make the email addresses hot. Such as <a href="mailto:thisappsup">THISAPPSUP</A>

But wait, for not that much more effort, how about this. They click on the link, and instead of just firing up an email, it gives it a little more structure:

Maybe not web 2.0, but at least web 1.1:

For support contact THISAPPSUP. If you need permissions, send mail to THISAPPLEADS.

Here is the mailto code:

<a href="mailto:thisappsup?Subject=Support Request for This App&Body=This App Support Team, I need help with This App">THISAPPSUP</a>

This way you can help give a little structure to the mail request. Even though the sender can still change things, it will still help speed things up and structure it more. It will also help differentiate sources of the mail if mail groups are used for multiple purposes. For example, you could include a reference to the page from which the mail is being sent, or a version number.

Note: The email addresses in this post are purely fictitious. The links will initiate an email message, but don't expect that the example recipients will actually work. :)

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