During the discovery and development phase of implementing a new AMS, it is not uncommon for staff to ask for automated emails from the system to alert staff to certain changes that are occurring. A couple of common examples:

1. I'd like the system to send me an email when a member changes their contact information, so I can confirm it's correct.
2. I'd like the system to send me an email when someone registers for our latest event so I can review the registration and check for errors.

These are laudable ideas. I'm all in favor of keeping data clean.

But here's the problem: As soon as the system starts sending more than a handful of these emails per week, the staff receiving will start ignoring them. Because it's overwhelming and it's constant and the emails always come at an inconvenient time.

A better approach is to set up queries or reports that the staff member can run when it is convenient for them to actually pay attention and review. Not only is batching the work more effective, but it puts less of a "load" on the system (those automated emails use overhead, and the more automated emails you have, the heavier the load on the system).

So look at your system-generated emails and make sure you really need them.

(Hat tip to Teena Whittenhall at Protech for this idea!)