> When promoting clients on the net, my partners and I would like to
> distribute announcements and special offers to relevant mailing lists, but
> we DON'T want to antagonize subscribers or list owners. So how should we do
> it?
There may be no way to do so. Mailing lists aren't generally created
for the purpose of allowing people to advertise on them. Your
question is sort of like asking "how does one knit a slice of cake?"
> 1) Have you ever accepted publicity/advertising announcements on your list?
> Would you?
Advertising might be appropriate on some of my lists. For instance, I
maintain a list that deals with a specific type of laptop computer,
which needs special hard disks, software, cases, batteries, etc. An
occasional brief note from a supplier about products designed for this
model of laptop might be welcome, because it is information that is
relevant to the list and not easily found elsewhere. However,
advertising hype would NOT be welcomed, and neither would an extensive
list of products or services.
Also, if the number of ads were even a small fraction (say 5%) of the
number of total messages, the utility of the list would suffer too
much to make it worthwhile. So even if most ads were appropriate, I
might have to disallow advertisements because there would otherwise be
too many of them.
> 2) Would it matter if you were contacted personally by email or phone
> _before_ someone sent an unsolicited announcement to your list?
I don't have time to answer such queries. Obviously, I'd rather
someone ask before posting an inappropriate message, but even taking
my time to read their message and figure out whether the message is
appropriate is too much of an imposition if I have to do it very
often.
I'd much prefer that people read the list and see whether it is
appropriate before advertising there. One good rule would be: don't
even attempt to advertise to any list or newsgroup that you don't read
regularly.
> 3) Would you allow an announcement that included offers, prices, or
> ordering instructions for a product or service? If not, how should offers,
> prices, and other clearly commercial material be handled? Web pages? Email
> address for info?
Any ads should be brief. Pointers to web pages or email servers are a
good way to provide more information.
> 4) How would you react if someone offered to pay you to post an "ad" to
> your list? Would your reaction change if the "ad" was clearly relevant to
> the list topic? Would it matter how much money you were offered?
I would not accept money for advertising to any of my lists, and I
would not join any list that accepted money for advertising. The
reason is that no amount of money you could afford is worth the
interruption and time it takes to read even a single off-topic
message.
Either the message is appropriate, in which case it costs nothing to
post, or it's inappropriate, and you can't post it for any price.
> 5) Would you open your subscriber list to an unsolicited direct emailing
> under any circumstances?
No. I would consider this an abuse of my list members' trust.
> What if you got paid for it?
Hell, no. I'd be *less* likely to do this for money, because that
smacks of favoritism. Either the list membership is open to everyone,
or you can't have it for any price.
> What if you could
> review the proposed mailing beforehand and were assured no other mailings
> would go out?
I don't have time to do that, even if you want to pay me to do it.
Something you have to realize: the real cost of advertising by mass
emailing isn't in the cost it takes to produce the material or send it
out. The real cost is in everybody's time in reading it, even if they
just delete the message. If ads decrease the signal-to-noise ratio on
a mailing list to a point that it's unusable, you've destroyed a
valuable resource, and there's no way you can pay for that.
Keith Moore
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