There are a ton of email etiquette rules out there that are good to know and follow. One that’s rarely addressed is this See Below scenario:

You’ve been replying back and forth with a friend and decide you need to bring in another friend for their opinion. So on the 8th reply you CC this second friend and simply say “see below.”

Awesome, now I get to read through all your earlier emails and signatures and attached signature images to try to parse out what you’re asking of me.

Rather, do this

1. Quickly summarize what you and friend 1 have been discussing
2. Ask a direct question
3. Bask in email etiquette happiness

For more fun email don’ts, check out how to make The Oatmeal hate you.

If you happen to host a website with Spigot’s hosting company Cinch, you’ll know that we also provide email hosting with your account that is connected to your domain (e.g. joe@joes.com). It’s a decent service, but very basic. And I mean very basic. Here’s the account specs: We limit each hosting client to 5 email accounts, and each account has a mere 50mb inbox limit (We’ll often bump those numbers up if you need it, but that’s the basic set up). We’re careful to let everyone know that this service is basic, and if a more robust email hosting is needed, there are many options that can be looked at.

The Google

One of those options is Google Apps, a free service that not only provides email, but calendars, online documents, and a few other services are also provided. The email service is a definite step up from what Cinch provides, with unlimited email accounts and a whopping 7gb storage per account. You’ll also gain access to Gmail’s excellent webmail interface. Cinch also supplies a webmail interface, but compared to Gmail, it’s clunky, non-intuative, and bug ugly.

But perhaps the biggest benefit is having Gmail’s superior spam filtering engine on your side. Most spam will be caught before it even gets to your inbox, and what does get through can be flagged, reported, and teacher will post their names on the blackboard. neah neah.

We’ve recently switched all Spigot emails and calendars over to Google Apps and couldn’t be happier. The extra space is nice and the spam flow has all but stopped. Highly recommended if you’re having any sort of email issues.

If you’re a DIY’er here’s a link to getting started with Google Apps. If you’re too busy running your own business, give us a call and we can help you make the switch for a reasonable price.

UPDATE: Two weeks into the switch I find that emails coming from people who are on the same server as us (which would be most of my clients) are getting lost into the ether – Nothing arrives in my inbox, and the sender gets nothing bounced back. Turns out I didn’t turn off the email services within my hosting configuration. I also missed a few CNAME records and failed to delete an A record. If this all sounds like Greek, here’s a couple links that may help if you’re having issues:

1. Creating Your MX Records & CNAME Records for Google Apps: (mt) Media Temple
2. Creating an SPF Record for Google Apps

Big, green and explicit

The plan was to take the 1200 or so contacts from the Chamber list and send one last unsolicited message requiring each recipient to explicitly subscribe if they wished to continue receiving the newsletter.

Results: 65 out of 1200 recipients continued their subscriptions.

Overall I can’t say I’m surprised. There wasn’t a number I was shooting for, but I would have guessed something a bit higher. Perhaps even quite a bit higher. I’m attributing the results to one of the following conclusions:

1. Most people don’t like receiving email newsletters
2. Most people don’t like receiving my email newsletters

That’s not self-deprecation talking… Of all the emails I receive from Chamber members, there are only a handful that I actually read, or that actually pertain to my sphere of relevance. It must hold true then that most members don’t find my newsletter relevant either.

Big thanks to those who did subscribe

To the 65 of you who did subscribe, I thank you. I’m looking forward to sending out my first campaign through Campaign Monitor in the next month or so. I hope you continue to find it relevant and informative. Feel free to forward it on.

If you meant to subscribe but it just didn’t happen, no worries. Scroll down to the footer and you’ll find a hand sign up form. You’ll be on the list instantly. And if you decide later that it isn’t for you, unsubscribing is just as easy.

Nice list, what do I do with it?

The PC Chamber will send you a list as a file that can be opened using Microsoft Excel, but what should be done with it? Add each email to your Address Book? Import them somehow into your email system?

Desktop email clients (Outlook, Apple Mail) are not not ideally set up to send out a massively distributed newsletter (nor is web based email such as Gmail, Yahoo! or Hotmail).

The answer should be to use an email marketing solution such as Constant Contact or Campaign Monitor. These types of companies make it easy to create newsletters, manage subscribers, and offer excellent reporting on the success of your campaign. They also ensure that you are complying with the CAN-SPAM act.  But there’s one huge, glaring problem – They don’t allow third party subscriber lists, including those from a Chamber of Commerce. This is how Campaign Monitor describes their policy:

Although we know that Chambers of Commerce and Tradeshow lists, for example, often give access to lists with email addresses to each member, we don’t consider this enough permission to use with our service, since the permission was not given directly to you. (link to source)

Aren’t we already opted in?

When Spigot Design became a PC Chamber member, part of the agreement to signing up was that we allow the Chamber to distribute our email addresses to other members. This was obviously acceptable since we’re granted access to the same list. I spoke with Colleen Burke, Director of Member Services at the Chamber and she says that the Chamber has begun to require that new members ‘opt in’ to distributing their email. The plan is to also require all members to opt in retroactively, and Colleen is currently planning the best and smoothest way to accomplish this.

This is a good step in ensuring that the Chamber list is robust, and that as few members as possible mark these newsletters as spam. Unfortunately I’m not sure this will fully satisfy the email marketing companies into allowing members to upload the Chamber list. Their policies are fairly black and white. Speaking with a “Subscriber List Review” staff person at Constant Contact I was informed that, “To comply with our policy, each subscriber you upload should have met you, said my name is So-and-so, here’s my email address, and yes, send me your newsletter, “ which means even ‘opt-in’ isn’t good enough.

That’s not the only way to comply with their rules, but it’s clear they want you to have explicit permission.

So what’s the answer?

Here’s where we get to some hard choices. There is no easy answer. According to the person I spoke with at Constant Contact, the answer is simply that you cannot use this list, at least not with their products. But we have the Chamber list, and we have permission to use it… so here’s a few options that we do have:

1. Self hosted software

This is the option Spigot Design has chosen. I installed an open-source (free) program called poMMo, a self-hosted “mass mailing software” application. “Self Hosted” means that I installed it on my own server rather than being hosted elsewhere, (as Campaign Monitor is). With these types of applications there is no subscriber police so can upload any list you wish. poMMo works as advertised, and I’m able to send newsletters and manage subscriber lists.

There are some drawbacks however:

1. No reporting. There is no data collected on who opened the email, if they clicked through to the site, or who un-subscribed.
2. Installation. You have to know how to set up a database and install a php based application.
3. No templates for newsletters. You’d better know a little html here, or no go.
4. No one ensuring you comply with the CAN-SPAM act.

There are similar applications that are more robust and provide reporting features, but they are commercial applications costing $500 and up. I wasn’t prepared at the time to commit to one, but I now wonder if the reporting features alone would be worth the investment.

2. Get subversive

This option ranges in to ethics and how comfortable you are with skirting stated policies… According to the Constant Contact representitive I spoke with there are “probably quite a few” of their clients who are using third party lists that fall outside of their policy. But unless there is a problem with their account or they receive an inordinate amount of spam or bounces, they don’t bother with them.

So theoretically speaking, you could create an account at Constant Contact, upload your Chamber list and claim it as legitimate. Personally I couldn’t choose this option, but it is enticing.

Judging from the number of Chamber member emails I get from Constant Contact, I suspect many of us have chosen this route.

3. The Chamber to the rescue?

According to Ms. Burke, the Park City Chamber/Bureau has been in contact with Constant Contact and there is some sort of deal that may be worked out to allow members to use the list. I was unable to verify this with the representative that I spoke with, but perhaps this issue will be resolved once the details are known. If a deal does get worked out, hopefully this will spur other companies to create a similar deal with the Chamber, as there are many others out there (I prefer Campaign Monitor myself). So thank you, Colleen, please keep up the good work!

Conclusion

Unfortunately there is currently no ‘easy’ answer to sending out email newsletters to Park City Chamber/Bureau members. But there are answers, even if slightly difficult. Ultimately, the best way to build your list is the old fashioned way, by meeting people face to face and asking permission, or directing them to your own contact collecting system.

UPDATE on 6/13/09

I’ve decided to move my newsletter/subscriber list over to Campaign Monitor, mainly for the reporting features.

I attempted to upload a list that I thought was clean, but after failing the review process, I realized it wasn’t clean enough. This means I can no longer use the Chamber list as it is given, as Campaign Monitor considers it a third party list.

My solution is to send out one final email to the Chamber list using the poMMo software, and requiring each recipient to go to my site, and specifically sign up to receive further emails that I’ll send from Campaign Monitor. While this may not seem like an ideal solution (in that I won’t be reaching as many people), the list – in the end – will be very clean, and contain only those who are truly interested in receiving future contact from us.

UPDATE on 8/26/09

The results are in from my little plan, and while not surprising, still somewhat disappointing.

Tame the multi-pointed beast

Note: Part 2 in a series on better email communication. Write better, get better results. Here’s Part I.

That beast above is called Hydra, a multi headed creature from Greek mythology. It was said to possess the ability to grow back any of its heads that happened to be cut off, and could spew poisonous fumes at its enemies. Hercules figured out that if you cut off all the heads and then burn the remaining stumps you could kill it. Sounds a bit far fetched to me, but the story doesn’t go into how fast the heads grow back, or how he actually burned the stumps. Thats Greek Mythology for you, I guess.

In my last article I discussed keeping your emails to one point, but what happens when you get a Hydra like email, with so many points you can’t tame them all?

What most people do in these situations is to simply hit ‘reply’ or ‘reply-all’ and start typing away. For people who are concerned about effective email communication, the answer is almost as simple, but much more effective.

Taking the One point to rule them all rule, the idea is to have a point to make, and answer only that point. And to reply only to that one point. In most desktop email clients this is easily accomplished by highlighting the part of the email you are answering, and then hitting reply. A reply message window will open with only the highlighted text in the body, with a nice header above it stating the name of the person who originally sent the email, and when they sent it. Your reply is then typed in, keeping the entire email short, sweet, and concise. The only thing the recipient will have to read through is your reply and the pertinent part of their original email. All the extraneous stuff like signatures and unnecessary text and 10 other points are left out. Nice job, Hercules.

For extra credit, I’d also suggest you start using the technique known as ‘bottom posting.’ I’ll save that for next week.

Imagine if Moses had come down from that mountain not with two huge stone tablets with 10 commandments for the people to follow, but with one small tablet, with a single commandment. Wouldn’t have that been a lot easier to remember? I wonder if God thought 10 was a pretty concise number for a while, then realized his error and sent Jesus along to wrap all those commandments up into one – Love one another. That, I think, I can remember.

The point here is to be concise in your email. Keep the entire communication to one point. It won’t get read otherwise. If you have to make two points, send a second email. This way any replies to your single pointed email will be also be similarly single pointed.

In part 2 I will discuss what to do if this isn’t the case and an email or a reply comes in with multiple points.

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