According to Keith Moore
|
| > 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?"
|
How about this scheme:
Mailing lists with subscribers interested in public announcements/ads could
establish a companion list for just such things...
| > 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
|
--
Mathias Koerber Tel: +65 / 7780066 x 29
SW International Systems Pte Ltd Fax: +65 / 7779401
14 Science Park Drive #04-01 email: Mathias.Koerber@swi.com.sg
The Maxwell, Singapore Science Park
S'pore 0511 <A HREF=http://www.swi.com.sg/~mathias/mathias.html>MK</A>
* Eifersucht ist eine Leidenschaft, die mit Eifer sucht, was Leiden schafft *
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