Subscriber Service Can Be a Godsend for Firm’s E-Mail
One of the best ways to get your company’s message across with e-mail is to maintain a voluntary mailing list that people can subscribe to or remove themselves from.
A voluntary list can help you keep in touch with customers or potential clients without turning your company into an Internet pariah. Even some people who don’t mind getting unsolicited paper mail go ballistic when unwanted commercial mail or “spam” shows up in their e-mail in-box.
I once accidentally sent out the e-mail addresses of everyone on my list to all members of the list. That not only invaded the privacy of each member by revealing their e-mail address, but caused the mailing to have thousands of extra lines of junk in it that no one needed to see.
To avoid that ever happening again, I moved my list to a professional mailing service that uses a “list serve” program designed specifically for mass mailings. The advantage to this type of software is that people can subscribe or unsubscribe on their own by sending a message to the list with the word “subscribe” in the subject line or body of the message. Likewise, they can remove themselves by sending an “unsubscribe” message. The best-known list serve program, MajorDomo, runs on servers. Unless you own and operate your own server, the best way to use MajorDomo or a similar list is by asking if your Internet service provider offers it as a service.
If your ISP supports MajorDomo or a similar list serve, you can publish messages to the list by sending e-mail with an embedded password to a special e-mail address. When setting up the list, be sure to specify whether it should be an announcement list or a discussion list. An announcement list is for one-way communications and is what you want if you’re using it to inform people about your products and services. A discussion list is designed for people to write to one another. If someone responds to a message on a discussion list, that response goes to each member. Discussion lists should be used only by groups of people who want to stay in touch with one another. Anyone who joins a discussion list had better be prepared for lots and lots of mail.
Revnet (https://www.revnet.com) offers MailKing, a $99 PC program that automates the process of sending out bulk e-mail through your regular ISP. The software, which has database management functions to help you maintain your lists, sends out the messages one at a time but is automated so that once you set it in motion, it will send messages to your entire list.
Another option is to work with a service bureau that will send out the mail for you. Revnet also offers Revnet Express. Starting at $39 a month, the company will maintain your list on its servers and handle everything for you. You write your messages in any word processing program, paste them into a form on the company’s Web site, and Revnet makes sure the messages are delivered. Customers can subscribe and unsubscribe to the list via e-mail or from your Web site. The service has customization features to filter and tailor messages.
Sparknet (https://www.sparklist.com or [920] 490-5908) offers similar services starting at $50 a month. The company also offers a mailing list promotion service that, for a fee, will send out messages about your list to people who have indicated an interest in being on such lists.
Technology reports by Lawrence J. Magid can be heard at 1:48 p.m. weekdays on KNX 1070. He can be reached at larry.magid@latimes.com. His Web page is at https://www
.larrysworld.com or keyword “LarryMagid” on AOL.
