Ok, now that I have your attention. I'd like suggestions from members of the community on the best way to do bulk mailings to our user base (not product recommendations specifically or anything like that), but obvious pitfalls to watch out for. Our "mass mailing" policy in general has been pretty net-friendly, in that we only send mail to people who have registered our product at the address they gave us when they did so (we don't buy lists, etc.), and might be interested in the specific thing we're telling them about, and we only attempt to send each person mail once. We also don't do this very often and keep our mailing lists pretty current. So, any suggestions to make our having to send a bunch of mail more pleasant for the rest of the net? If any of you out there have specific experience with bulk mailing, I'd love to hear about it to avoid stepping on land mines others have already "detected", etc. Thanks in advance. -jcp-
On Fri, 21 Feb 1997, Joseph C. Pistritto wrote:
I'd like suggestions from members of the community on the best way to do bulk mailings to our user base (not product recommendations specifically or anything like that), but obvious pitfalls to watch out for.
Please don't refer to mailing your existing user base information as spamming. There is general acceptance of limited commercial speech via unsolicited email from a vendor to a customer. Examples of this include security alerts and new product information. One limit is the frequency. Obviously there is a different limit for security information than new product information. We define spaming as mass mailing people who have never contacted you. This can be commercial or otherwise. The reason it is important to define spam to not include valid interactions is to make sure your business customers know that there are acceptable ways for them to conduct business online that do not involve mail abuse. Mike. +------------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -------------------+ | Mike Leber Direct Internet Connections Voice 408 282 1540 | | Hurricane Electric Web Hosting & Co-location Fax 408 971 3340 | | mleber@he.net http://www.he.net | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
On Fri, 21 Feb 1997 19:12:35 -0800 "Joseph C. Pistritto" <jcp@pointcast.com> wrote:
Ok, now that I have your attention.
I'd like suggestions from members of the community on the best way to do bulk mailings to our user base (not product recommendations specifically or anything like that), but obvious pitfalls to watch out for.
The best way is not to do it. Neil. -- Neil J. McRae. Alive and Kicking. Domino: In the glow of the night. neil@DOMINO.ORG NetBSD/sparc: 100% SpF (Solaris protection Factor) Free the daemon in your <A HREF="http://www.NetBSD.ORG/">computer!</A>
On Mon 24 Feb, Neil J. McRae wrote:
On Fri, 21 Feb 1997 19:12:35 -0800 "Joseph C. Pistritto" <jcp@pointcast.com> wrote:
I'd like suggestions from members of the community on the best way to do bulk mailings to our user base (not product recommendations specifically or anything like that), but obvious pitfalls to watch out for.
The best way is not to do it.
Actually our users quite like service updates via email as long as we are not trying to sell them anything or there are too many. All our userbase downloads mail via POP3. In the Qualcomm version of popper there is the concept of bulletins - where you create your email and popper sends it to each user once when they connect on the fly. (Keeping a dbm file of who has recived the mail so they don't get loads of copies...) You need to be very careful with what you put in there - and keep the marketing poeple away from it ;-) Regards aid -- Adrian J Bool | mailto:aid@u-net.net Network Operations | http://www.u-net.net/ U-NET Ltd | tel://44.1925.484461/
participants (4)
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Adrian J Bool -
Joseph C. Pistritto -
Mike Leber -
Neil J. McRae