NYCPHP Meetup

[Jeff]

Steve,

"I think he might want to trickle out some "re-opt" emails to his
subscribers and in the 
future send email only to those who respond affirmatively."

I believe this is the way to go. 

And I should clarify one small point. He doesn't send the same job
description to 10,000 people. He sends different job descriptions to
different people based on their "specialty" areas.

As was noted in another email...my client is going to have to rethink
how he does business.

Jeff


-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Manes [mailto:smanes at magpie.com] 
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2003 8:11 PM
To: NYPHP Talk
Subject: RE: [nycphp-talk] Masking Emails and Avoiding Spam - OOPS


At 07:52 PM 5/1/2003 -0400, Jeff wrote:
>The point is that my client is panicking. He's worried he'll be put out

>of business now that AOL, MSN, et al., are talking about ways to deal 
>with spam.
>
>I'm interested to hear what others may think about this particular 
>situation.

He has every right to panic because they're not just talking.  In the
case 
of AOL, they're already doing.  I've forgotten the formula I saw a
couple 
of weeks ago but if you send X emails to non-existent/expired AOL
accounts 
in X days, you're automatically blackholed.  Worse, your mail will just 
disappear into the bit bucket without a bounce.

I know what the "official" definition is, but I don't think spam is 
unsolicited commercial email.  It's unsolicited, unwanted bulk email.
It's 
a lot like pornography: you know it when you see it.  If I was out of
work, 
living on ramen and water, and I landed a job because I was on that 
headhunter's list, I'd have a very different opinion of those mailings
than 
someone who was happily employed at 3x the salary offered.

I've gotten lots of spam that wasn't commercial, like chain letters 
demanding that I send a bunch of copies to my annoyed friends, political

demands that I Bitch To Bush and the "prayer for the day" crap I used to

get a couple of years ago.  Virus email is probably the most evil form
of 
spam even though there's rarely a commercial purpose to it.  By the same

token, the service advisories that Watchguard sends its customers and
which 
I never opted into are both bulk and commercial, yet they contain 
information that I want.

Your friend is probably going to have to make some adjustments.  Sending
a 
single job description out to 10,000 people is excessive.  I think he
might 
want to trickle out some "re-opt" emails to his subscribers and in the 
future send email only to those who respond affirmatively.





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