experience Generating e-mail

[Richard Gaskin]

Ronald Zellner wrote:

 > I guess the nature of the recipient list and the intent of the
 > mailings is at the heart of the issue, the process is pretty much
 > the same no matter what.  It is a question of whether the mailings
 > are intrusive or not, and not everyone agrees on that.

Explicit opt-in with user-verification is generally regarded as the 
responsible way to include addresses in a mailing list.

Anything less risks being seen as spam, and depending on the content and 
format of the specific email may be in violation of federal and state 
laws.  For example, as Stephen pointed out, providing clear instructions 
for opt-out is not merely a good idea but is required by US federal law 
under the CAN-SPAM Act.

Bulk emailing can be a very effective means of communicating with an 
audience, and indeed a good many of my customers rely on it to make 
their living.  But so many people have had their emails so abused and 
violated by disrespectful people for so long that we've had to create 
social protocols and laws for determining what's appropriate to do to 
other people's In Boxes.


 > One last observation on spamming:  Many years ago in the early use
 > of the Internet,  a doctor in a university dental program sent out
 > requests for people to complete a survey.  He was quite polite and
 > simply explained the request, assured that no follow-up would be
 > sent, and said that you should simply delete his message if you did
 > not choose to participate.  I chose to participate and found it was
 > a very insightful use of digital photos to gather useful input from
 > the general public.  However, when I tried to demonstrate this site
 > to my research class it was no longer available.  I soon learned that
 > some "programmer types" had received the same request, considered it
 > to be intrusive, and desired to address it by distributing a program
 > that overwhelmed his site.  The researcher was forced to abandon the
 > project.

While unfortunate for that research project, email is not a viable 
method for soliciting participation in a survey.  In the 21st century, 
no mass email is ever appropriate without a prior relationship or 
explicit opt-in.

A well-publicized web site with posts to appropriate online venues like 
discussion forums would be a better method to solicit survey participants.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
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