What is Trail Mail?

What is Trail Mail

Email is one of the most common mediums of conversation in many professional scenarios, and in many cases, many personal communications take place through emails. So, it is clear that Emails are an effective communication channel. You might have heard the term “Trail Mail” recently, while it’s not something new, and you might be unknowingly using or have seen the Trail Mail, but you don’t know yet that it’s called Trail Mail.

So, in this article, we are going to learn about what is Trail Mail. We will try to see some examples, that would make it clear as to what is trail mail. So, let’s get into it.

What is Trail Mail?

What is Email?

For someone who is not familiar with what is an Email, let’s discuss what is an Email. Though you can skip this part, this is a super quick discussion about what is an Email. So, Email is an effective means of communication, which uses electronic devices for delivering messages across computer networks.

I know this was a super silly thing, and this would be relevant a few decades back, but still, there might be some people who may not be familiar with Email (I don’t know why they aren’t familiar with the concept), but anyways, let’s move on to the concept that we are interested in right now, which is TrailMail.

What is TrailMail?

So finally we land up to understand what is a TrailMail. If you have ever run into a bigger conversation with someone through emails (like reply after reply), you have already gone through Trail Mail, or you have already seen the Trail Mail.

So, trail mail simply refers to the previous conversations that have been done with someone through email. Trail Mail is a simple way to carry out a continued conversation so that if the first or the other party wants to refer to the previous conversation, it becomes easy and handy. If you send an email to someone without an intention to get a reply, it won’t become a trail mail.

Just imagine this – you want to communicate with someone through an Email, and you have multiple communications with the same party, but because you are not familiar with the reply feature of the email, you end up creating and sending a new email every time you want to communicate with them.
Doing this would make it so harder to maintain the conversation, and it makes you take extra effort.

But trail emails make it easy, and handy to remember and refer to bigger conversations, like when you are having longer and more important conversations with someone through the mail, you would have all the details of the previous conversations, their time, etc. At your disposal.

It is a detailed mail or chain of emails that contains all the relevant information about the email conversation that has taken place between the users, like who had sent the first mail who was the recipient, how many people replied to that mail, and on which date and it also contains the whole conversation that has taken place.

The earlier content or earlier emails are taken as part of the running conversation for reference. All the relevant information like the email conversations, date, time, other replies, etc are stored for reference.

Benefits of Trail Mail

Now that you know what is a Trail mail, you might also have an idea of what are some of the benefits of using Trail mail. But still, let’s have a look at some of the benefits that we have with Trail Mails. Let’s first list out the benefits, and then we will try to discuss them one by one –

• Enhanced Communication Tracking.
• Reduced duplication in communication.
• Increase in Response rate(in case of follow-ups)
• Improved overall communication and collaboration.

While there are a few more benefits of using Trail mails, let’s have a look at the few we have listed above.

Enhanced Communication Tracking

When you are communicating with some third party through an email, with multiple replies, it is great to have Trail mail, as it will result in improved communication tracking, in case you want to refer to the conversation, you have it immediately at your disposal, and you won’t need to search for it for long.

Reduced duplication in communication

When you have trail mail, it can result in reduced duplication of communication, and shows effective communication between two parties, because they both know and can refer to the previous conversation. Often, when you don’t use trail mail, you may end up sending repeated emails, which has no use and increases the duration of the conversation.

Increase in Response rate (in case of follow-ups)

Sometimes, we might send important emails to someone, but they might miss it. In such times, replying to the same email may increase your chances of getting a response from another party. This also shows that you have approached them first, which again improves your chances of getting a response.

So, whenever you are sending a follow-up mail to someone, always reply to the mail you sent earlier.

Improved overall communication and collaboration

When you are using trail mail, it results in overall improvement of communication and collaboration between your team, clients, or party. It is important to have good and effective communication with the other party, to get things done because mails are usually used for business-related, and professional communications.

Conclusion:

So, in this article, we learned what is a Trail mail, and it’s just a simple concept, that many of us use without even knowing about it. Trail mail is one kind of copy of previous mail on which the receiver can give their reply. Anyone can send trail mail only the condition for this is there should be a previous conversation available between two or more people, while a reply on that same mail will be called trail mail.

We hope that now you know what is a Trail Mail, and are also familiar with the benefits of the Trail Mail. You can use Trail Mails as and when required in your email communication.

Frequently asked quiz questions about Trail Mail