[jgroome]

I see my email (Google Apps) as the main point of contact for ME on the Internet. Not my Facebook, not my Twitter, not whatever else. If someone has to send me a file, it goes to my email. If I just met somebody new and we're not at "Facebook friendship level" (a friend of mine's phrase) then they get my email. Email email email.

I'm also perfectly happy to use my email as a notification zone, as it's probably the one place online where I will absolutely definitely 100% receive whatever message I'm sent.

With regards to the emails themselves, I'm actually almost against the kind of personalisation that the author here is recommending. "Hey, Jim, your tweet got retweeted!"

Yes, very impressive, you worked out how to insert a merge field. How could I possibly have known the message was for me if you hadn't put my name at the top there? I suddenly feel so very engaged.

I just think it's a bit disingenuous, almost a little dishonest, to try and pretend that an email update from a company is actually a letter written to you personally by some guy who works at said company.

The yes-please-reply@ address is a nice gimmick, but if you're sending messages to this address and receiving no response then what makes you think anyone's reading them at all?