One statistic says average American worker receives approximately 50 e-mails a day -- that's a lot of information to read through. And this number sounds low to me -- I get around 100 a day! Numbers like these mean that your little message is literally competing for your recipient's attention. You'd better make sure your e-mail tells her what you want her to know -- fast!

While I have a mile-long list of e-mail atrocities that I could share, here are four most common mistakes I see in my inbox every day. By paying attention to these simple points, you can easily ensure your messages come across clearly and professionally ... and that they actually get READ!

Mistake #1: "Dissing" Subject

Ever receive an e-mail with an empty subject line? That drives me nuts! It's simply a courtesy to tell your reader what info you're delivering. When receiving a list of new e-mails, we all use subject lines to quickly determine what each one is about and whether we need to open it right away.

The more info you give in subject line, better. For example, instead of just titling your e-mail "Meeting," give me details: "Marketing Meeting Set for Nov. 9." This way I know instantly that you're talking about Marketing Department, *and* that I have a meeting to go to on Nov. 9.

Also keep in mind that many e-mail systems cut-off long subject lines, so shoot for *six words or less.*

Mistake #2: Rambling On and On and On and...

Because we're all receiving way too much information every day, it's important to make your point FAST and CLEARLY. Have you ever gotten an e-mail that's so long you put off reading it, and later discovered it had some important information at end? An associate of mine used to do this -- she'd send a drawn-out missive about her enlightening trip to Bali, and at very end of her message she'd sneak in something urgent like, "Oh and client will be here today at 2 p.m. instead of 4." Yikes!

Fire your "biggest gun" first. If you have something important to tell me, or if you want me to take any sort of action, be sure to make your point in first few sentences. Otherwise I may not read it.

Throughout 90s key benefits of e-mail were in its cost-efficiency, its quickness and click through rates. The fact that e-mail allows for good customer retention and prospect list building are further benefits, along with its viral marketing capabilities and its capacity to be responsive and customary, based on user action. Thanks to ability to tailor content, style and frequency of e-mails, depending on customer buying patters, actions and demographic statistics, e-mail is one of best customer-focused marketing tool at a business’s disposal today.

E-mails nurture those important customer relationships and allow marketers to gather market intelligence.

Says Jonathan Jackson of emarketer (http://www.emarketer.com) “There’s also a sense of urgency about using e-mail. What’s first thing you do when you go online in morning? Head for your e-mail?”

Additional benefits have been added to resume of e-mail, with rise of rich media and improved CRM and measurement tools. And sheer amount of usage and growth creates an even wider audience for marketers and businesses.

According to Jackson there is “plenty of evidence to suggest that e-mail is indeed killer app.” Says Jonathan, “In US there are 97 million active e-mail users aged 14+ who send or receive five or more e-mail messages every week. They account for 44% of total 14+ population. And while there are 97 million e-mail users today, there are only 88 million active web users.”

Naturally, with an increased usage comes a proliferation of e-mails jostling for position in inboxes across globe, so target audience is growing but task of ensuring that messages are read is made increasingly difficult. Thankfully more and more options are springing up ranging from simple HTML programmes to streaming media, video and audio e-mail options. But more on that later.

A History The beginnings of remote message transmission came with smoke signals and jungle drums. This evolved towards telegraph wire messaging and morse code via airwaves. The telex system was also widely used from 1920s-1980s and telephone network has evolved substantially towards mobile networks and WAP technology. Just as communications have seen massive growth in recent years, so has e-mail.

Back in 1957 USSR launched Sputnik, first artificial earth satellite. This is when experiements in ‘packet-switching’ began. By early 1970s, first host-to-host protocol was being used and first cross-country link was installed by AT&T between UCLA and BBN at 56kbps.

In 1971 Ray Tomlinson of BBN invented an email program to send messages across a distributed network. Soon after that, Larry Roberts wrote first email management program (RD) to list, selectively read, file, forward, and respond to messages. E-mail was born.

Two years later, in 1973, first computer-to-computer chat took place at UCLA and University of London communicated by e-mail with people in Norway. In 1975 John Vittal developed MSG, first all-inclusive email program providing replying, forwarding, and filing capabilities and Satellite links crossed two oceans (to Hawaii and UK) as first TCP tests were run.

The 1970s was decade when e-mail really started to take hold. The Queen of UK, Elizabeth II sent her first email in 1976 and shortly afterwards emoticons became widely used.

The 1980s saw introduction of DNS, Domain Name System and Internet Relay Chat (IRC). With shopping malls arriving on Internet in 1994. E-mail and net have come a long way. Today, thirty years on, email has become killer app.