Email is slower than chat but richer. One thread can hold a complete negotiation, a customer escalation from complaint to resolution, or a vendor dispute. That makes email a strong record of multi-step business reasoning.
What makes email valuable
- Long arcs: deals and projects that run for weeks or months
- Formal reasoning: written proposals, justifications and approvals
- External coordination: customers, vendors and partners
- Depth: many companies have many years of archives
Polyshares lists email as operational data it licenses. A sample on its site shows three years of Gmail history.
Not sure if your data qualifies? The intake takes a few minutes.
What to exclude
- Attorney-client privileged threads
- HR, payroll, medical and personal emails
- Threads under NDA or confidentiality agreements
- Anything containing payment, banking or government ID details
- Personal mailboxes of executives unless cleared
Preparing email data
- Choose mailboxes and date ranges (shared inboxes are cleanest).
- Apply exclusion rules by label, sender domain or keyword.
- List external company names to mask.
- Agree the anonymization method and sample review with the buyer.
Who to talk to
Polyshares names email (including Gmail) among its data sources. Read our Polyshares review or compare it with micro1 in Polyshares vs micro1.
Frequently asked questions
Can I license emails that include customers or vendors?
Only with identities removed and where your contracts allow it. Threads under NDA or confidentiality clauses should be excluded.
Which email accounts should I include?
Shared and role-based inboxes (sales@, support@) and functional teams are usually the cleanest. Exclude executive, HR and legal mailboxes unless counsel clears them.