One thing that many people fail to realize is that email was never meant to
be “real time”. The entire email infrastructure is built to expect and properly
handle delays ranging from minutes to hours to even days. While most of the
time email arrives nearly instantaneously, the fact is you can’t count on
it.
Understanding that can be very, very freeing.
We’ll look at this from two perspectives: what email delays can mean to you
as a sender, and how understand that email can be delayed can affect how you
work with email as a recipient.