What if some emails had an expiration date? After the expiration date, both mailbox providers and mail clients (MUAs) could do smart things with the message instead of just leaving it there.
This could be implemented with a simple "X-Expires" header.
This would be useful for automated reports and daily log files that are sent out on a recurring basis. It's also great for news and stock alerts, weekly newsletters and more.
This is a win for consumers because they have less mailbox clutter. Messages that are no longer relevant wouldn't hang around in the Inbox. Depending on implementation, messages that have expired could be flagged with a visual indicator, moved to a special folder or just deleted. Users should be able to override this behavior if they don't want messages to expire automatically.
This is a win for mailbox providers and ISPs because they save disk space and bandwidth. IT administrators should love this because it will keep Outlook PST files smaller and help people stay under quota.
This is a win for marketers because they will get fewer spam complaints and higher open and clickthrough rates. If a user see lots of mail piled up, they are more likely to select all of them and delete them without reading them or even worse, mark them all as spam. If there is just one or two messages that are recent and relevant, they are more likely to be opened and acted upon and less likely to mark them as spam.
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