Know All About What is an Email with Types and Importance

Discover the essence of email – an electronic medium that revolutionised global communication. Learn about its components, mechanisms, types, and historical evolution, that shows how it has played an important role in modern connectivity, cost-effective outreach, universal accessibility, and seamless information dissemination digitally. 

Email is among the most important forms of communicating digitally. It is used for various purposes ranging from formal to informal communication. 

Explore what is an email today, along with its history, types and more. 

1. What is an email?
2. How does email work?
3. Types of email
4. History of email
5. Importance of email

What is an Email?

Email is the short form of electronic mail. It is a method of exchanging digital communication via internet or a network. Anyone with an internet connection can send email messages to an individual or a group of email recipients around the world. This transfer of communication occurs in a few seconds. 

In an email network, one sends written documents, audio, or video files to recipients in the same network. The recipients can view, reply or forward (to other recipients) for this correspondence.  

Related: What is email marketing?

How does Email Work?

In an email communication, there is a sender and receiver. But there are several background processes that occur between the time the sender hits send on an email and the receiver receives. 

Here are the main components of an email. 

• Sender – The one who creates the email to be sent to the receiver
• Receiver – The one (s) who receive the email
• Email address – It determines who is sending and receiving the email; there will be one email address of the sender and one or more email addresses of the receivers. It comprises three parts – local part (a unique set of characters from alphabets to numbers), @ symbol, and domain name
• Mail Server – Each email that is sent goes through a mail server. There can be two mail servers between the sender and recipient. 
• MTA – Mail Transfer Agent is a program that receives mail from the sender and send to SMTP
• Email Protocols – Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Post Office Protocol (POP), and Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) are the three email protocols.
• Email Client – Think of Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc
• Email Domain – It comes after the @ symbol in an email address
• Email Subject Line – A single text line that determines what the email is about 
• Email Attachment – It is a file that is sent along with the text. The attachment can be a document, audio or video file. 

Relationship Between Mail Servers and Email Protocols

Outgoing mail servers refer to SMTP. Once you send the message in the email, the email client sends it over to the SMTP server through MTA. This server interacts with your email client to know your email address and the recipient’s. Then, the sender’s SMTP server interacts with the DNS (Domain Name Server) that takes the recipient’s email address and converts it into an IP address.  

Incoming mail servers have either POP3 (Post Office Protocol, version 3) or IMAP. Once the SMTP server of the recipient identifies the DNS, the message is forwarded to the POP3 or IMAP servers. That message is stored in the sendmail queue that waits for the recipient’s email client to receive. 

Types of Email

Here are the most popular types of email. 

Types	Description
Newsletters	When brands inform their customers about the latest offerings, launches, discounts, etc. routinely
Lead Nurturing	When marketers send emails to customers in the different stages of the marketing funnel
Transactional	Sent to recipients for order receipts, payment confirmation, etc

Also, read up on email marketing tools.

History of Email

The concept of email could be said to be derived from ‘MAILBOX’ program in MIT back in 1965. Then users could drop messages on MIT computers for other university students to see. 

Around 1969, ARPANET was introduced by the US Department of Defense. ARPANET or  Advanced Research Projects Agency Network was a network of computers connected across this department. 

In 1971, electronic mail was developed by Ray Tomlinson utilising ARPANET when he worked for them as a contractor. He introduced the @ symbol to the “nameofuser@nameofcomputer”. 

This all happened before the internet was introduced in the 1980s. During this time, internet service providers were able to connect people around the world. In the early 1990s, electronic mail came to be known as email. 

Importance of Email

Here are some reasons why emails are widely used today. 

Affordable Medium to Communicate

Email communication requires an internet connection. Apart from that, emails are free. This kind of free communication with prospective and remaining customers is cost-efficient for a business. 

Accessible Anywhere

Emails can be accessed anywhere as long as there is an internet connection for the sender and receiver. It opens the barriers of communication. It also can be easily sent to many people who may be in different places. 

Sharing Information

One can share any information and file types. As larger files can be put into the cloud, emails with large file attachments can share and store such information. 

Parting Thoughts

Here is all you need to know about what is an email. Hope you have an idea of how it works, its types and history. 

While at it, you can check out some free email marketing courses.