Make email notifications great again
Description
Notification emails contain lots of repetitive boiler-plate text, e.g.
From: "Foodsharing" noreply@lebensmittelretten.de
Subject: YYY hat an Betrieb ZZZ eine Nachricht geschriebenLieber XXX,
YYY hat an Betrieb ZZZ eine Nachricht geschrieben.
Gehe auf den folgenden Link, um Deine Nachricht auf der foodsharing-Plattform zu lesen.
Dein foodsharing-Team
Alles klar, können wir so machen! LG YYY
Emphasis on the actual information added.
This is just long enough to prevent the actual message from being displayed in most truncated previews, thus rendering that email's preview useless. The email subject (e.g. "Neues Thema in BotschafterInnen") is also too generic to be of much use.
Goal
Make email notifications great again by making them less ambiguous (and maybe partially less frequent, but that's probably worth a separate issue).
Evidence
Inboxes are filled with identical-looking messages, it is therefore difficult to spot e.g. urgent fetching requests amid "Thank you"s.
Solution
- The email subject of Forum posts could be "{forum name}: {thread title}", replies if followed prefixed with "Re: " or "Aw: "
- The email should start with the message for better preview. All default text should follow it (with proper rewording if necessary), maybe including a direct link to unsubscribe from a thread or mute notifications for e.g. 24h
- The email sender could use the actual sender's name (but still use noreply@foodsharing.de), maybe also as signature following the message since that information would be removed from the introductory text.
- The email subject of direct messages should start with the conversation name. Maybe even followed by the message's first few words
The leading example would then become
From: "YYY" noreply@foodsharing.de
Subject: ZZZ: Alles klar, können wir machen! L...Alles klar, können wir so machen! LG YYY
- YYY
Gehe auf den folgenden Link, um Deine Nachricht auf der foodsharing-Plattform zu lesen.
Dein foodsharing-Team
Links / references
-
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/email-subject-lines/
Summary: Focus on the first 40 characters. Descriptive and well-written subject lines allow recipients to make an informed decision to get more details or move on.
- Also maybe adapt this style to https://gitlab.com/foodsharing-dev/foodsharing/blob/master/src/Modules/Dashboard/DashboardView.php