Automatically generating email subject lines

• US 9,331,965 B2
• Filed: 08/23/2013
• Issued: 05/03/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 08/23/2013
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Caskey, Sasha P., Farrell, Robert G., Kanevsky, Dimitri, Sainath, Tara N.
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Phuoc
• Assistant Examiner(s): Zand, Davoud
• Application Number:
  US13/974,291
• Publication Number:
  US 20150058426A1
• Time in Patent Office: 984 Days
• Field of Search: 709/204, 709/206, 709/207
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/02 using automatic reactions or user delegation, e.g. automatic replies or chatbot-generated messages
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/42 Mailbox-related aspects, e.g. synchronisation of mailboxes

Abstract

Systems and methods for automatically generating e-mail subject lines are provided. A method for automatic generation of subject lines for electronic mail (email), comprises extracting topics from an email message, computing a sender relevance score for each topic, computing a receiver relevance score for each topic, ranking the topics based on the sender and receiver relevance scores, extracting syntactic units from the email message, ranking the extracted syntactic units from the email message based on the topic ranking, and assigning one or more subject lines to the email message based on the ranking of the syntactic units.

Claims

1. A system for automatic generation of subject lines for electronic mail (email), comprising:

a memory, and at least one processor operatively coupled to the memory;

an extraction module executed via the at least one processor and capable of extracting topics from an email message;

a prioritization module executed via the at least one processor and capable of computing a sender relevance score for each topic, and ranking the topics based on the sender relevance scores;

a sorting module executed via the at least one processor and capable of ranking a plurality of syntactic units from the email message based on the topic ranking; and

an assignment module executed via the at least one processor and capable of assigning one or more subject lines to the email message based on the ranking of the syntactic units;

wherein the assignment module is further capable of;

assigning different subject lines to the email message for each respective intended recipient of a plurality of intended recipients of the email message so that each respective intended recipient is sent the same email message with a different subject line from that of other intended recipients, wherein the different subject line corresponding to an intended recipient is determined based on one or more characteristics of the intended recipient; and

assigning an identifying subject line different from the one or more of the subject lines assigned to the email message, the identifying subject line indicating one or more preferences of a sender of the email message and being visible to the sender and not visible to a recipient of the email message;

wherein, when the sender receives a reply to the email message from the recipient, the reply email message includes the identifying subject line instead of the one or more of the subject lines assigned to the email message, or a combination of the identifying subject line and the one or more of the subject lines assigned to the email message.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the prioritization module is capable of computing the sender relevance score by comparing a term frequency score for a topic to a corpus frequency score for the topic, wherein the corpus frequency score is based on a corpus of emails that have been at least one of sent or received by the sender of the email message over a period of time.

3. The system according to claim 2, wherein the prioritization module is capable of computing the sender relevance score by further identifying topics that match one or more characteristics of the sender of the email message.

4. The system according to claim 3, wherein the one or more characteristics of the sender are derived from behavioral data of the sender taken in connection with the corpus of emails.

5. The system according to claim 1, wherein the prioritization module is further capable of computing a receiver relevance score for each topic, and ranking the topics based on the sender and receiver relevance scores.

6. The system according to claim 5, wherein the prioritization module is capable of computing the receiver relevance score by comparing a term frequency score for a topic to a corpus frequency score for the topic, wherein the corpus frequency score is based on a corpus of emails that have been at least one of sent or received by the intended recipient of the email message over a period of time.

7. The system according to claim 6, wherein the prioritization module is capable of computing the receiver relevance score by further identifying topics that match the one or more characteristics of the intended recipient of the email message.

8. The system according to claim 7, wherein the one or more characteristics are derived from behavioral data of the intended recipient taken in connection with the corpus of emails.

9. The system according to claim 1, wherein the topics comprise at least one of key words or key phrases.

10. The system according to claim 1, wherein the assignment module is further capable of assigning a plurality of the subject lines to the email message to be visible to an intended recipient in a configuration for displaying the plurality of the subject lines.

11. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising program code tangibly embodied thereon, which when executed by a computer, performs method steps for automatic generation of subject lines for electronic mail (email), the method steps comprising:

extracting topics from an email message;

computing a sender relevance score for each topic;

computing a receiver relevance score for each topic;

ranking the topics based on the sender and receiver relevance scores;

ranking a plurality of syntactic units from the email message based on the topic ranking;

assigning one or more subject lines to the email message based on the ranking of the syntactic units;

assigning different subject lines to the email message for each respective intended recipient of a plurality of intended recipients of the email message so that each respective intended recipient is sent the same email message with a different subject line from that of other intended recipients;

wherein the different subject line corresponding to an intended recipient is determined based on one or more characteristics of the intended recipient; and

assigning an identifying subject line different from the one or more of the subject lines assigned to the email message, the identifying subject line indicating one or more preferences of a sender of the email message and being visible to the sender and not visible to a recipient of the email message;

wherein, when the sender receives a reply to the email message from the recipient, the reply email message includes the identifying subject line instead of the one or more of the subject lines assigned to the email message, or a combination of the identifying subject line and the one or more of the subject lines assigned to the email message.