Posted by "Richard Lynch" on 10/13/05 21:04

On Thu, October 13, 2005 12:47 pm, Nathaniel Hall wrote:
> I have a PHP script that automatically sends an e-mail when accessed.
> Is there any way to mark the e-mail that is sent
> as urgent or flagged?
>
> Any help is appreciated.

Yes, but...

You can add a header "Priority: High" (I think it's "High")

But only spammers use that [1], so it increases the odds of getting
marked as spam.

The urgency of an email, as defined by the sender, has turned out to
be relatively useless, since the urgency, as defined by the recipient,
rarely matches. While you may have the luxury of knowing for sure
that the two urgencies (sender/recipient) *DO* match up, it's a rare
occurrence.

If you have sufficient control over sender and recipient accounts, you
could add URGENT to the Subject: and/or set up filtering on the email
client to force the message to be flagged there, based on criteria
that are less likely to get the email flagged as junk.

Maybe if Priority email cost more to send and bulk was cheaper, these
settings would become meaningful again. But, as it stands now, they
are largely useless to the sender. I'm sure some recipients
re-prioritize email based on filters, and that remains useful.

[1] This was an exaggeration, though not a huge one. Actually, savvy
spammers no longer use a Priority setting.

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