Business E-Mail Terms
What is an e-mail 'client'?
What is 'CRM'?
Customer Relation Management systems, or CRMs, are systems that largely exist inside of Outlook or Lotus Notes, the e-mail systems that companies are using, and they track the relationship between people that you're communicating with. In other words, if I'm communicating with someone named Ben, and he's a client of mine, the Customer Relation Management system can track how many times I e-mail Ben, what kind of communication I've sent to him, how often I'm calling him, how often I'm e-mailing him, what type of information I've sent to him. Customer Relation Management systems can also record the demographics, such as how old is Ben, what's Bens race, what's Bens age, what's his status within the company, is he a decision-maker, is he in marketing, and all that kind of stuff. So everything used to manage that account or that person, is what's called CRMs.
What is a 'hanging folder'?
A hanging folder in email, are the folders that hang usually to the left side of the inbox, or whatever application is open such as the calendar or the contacts. It's just a list of folders where you're storing emails. In Outlook, people create hanging folders under the mailbox for various projects or for people they're working with and so-forth. Those are called the hanging folders.
What is an e-mail 'header'?
An e-mail header is the basically where the message came from. Most companies use 'From so and so', the date sent and perhaps the time and the subject. You could also have other things in the message header, such as the IP address, the location, and a lot of other details of when, how, and where that message was created. Most companies turn that off because it occupies a lot of the e-mail space that you see and limits the amount of space that you can then type in. So most usually an e-mail header contains just who it's from and the date and time. That's the message header for most companies.
What is an e-mail 'thread'?
An e-mail thread is a particular segment of a long conversation. Thus email can be seen as a synchroniser. I send an e-mail to you, you send an e-mail back to me and thus the ping-pong is back and forth. The more people you have on it, the more e-mail pieces or segments. Each one of those segments is called a thread. And so if an e-mail goes over a long period of time, over a large distribution list, it can have a lot of individual e-mail threads to that particular e-mail communication.
What is a 'hyperlink'?
A hyperlink is a shortcut to a document without attaching a document. In other words, it's the HTML path, or the hyperlink, to that specific IP address, or that location on a server where that document resides. Rather than putting the document into the email, the hyperlink links you to where the document is, and that saves on the size of an email.
What is 'auto reply'?
Auto reply for most computers or e-mail systems is responding to an e-mail when you're away. In other words, most people set up a "Hey, I'm on vacation" message, but no one really pays attention to it, and you still get the e-mail. Auto reply is just like your phone when it has an auto response with voice mail and picks up. There's an auto response with e-mail saying "Ben is out of the office" when you set up your auto-reply.
