On sending Cohousing-related permission-based emails
From: Craig Ragland (craigraglandgmail.com)
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 10:53:25 -0700 (PDT)
I recently received yet another broadcast about a cohousing group with units
for sale.

Here is my reply (altered to protect the innocent) - following my reply, I
share a bit about the emails that Coho/US currently broadcasts to our
"permission-based" lists...
---------------------------
Dear <<insert Name Here>>,

With so many permission-based communication channels available, such as
Coho-L and the Cohousing Website, sending broadcasts out to people who did
not specifically request that information is easily categorized by their
recipients as SPAM.

I note that three of your <<insert State Name Here>> Cohousing "competitors"
are advertising in the Cohousing Website Classified Ads:

http://www.cohousing.org/mkt/marketplace

These groups have the permission of their audience for their attention.

While I'm happy to hear this news from <<insert Cohousing Group Name Here>>,
I suspect that some of those you reached out and touched may not be.

Sincerely,
Craig
---------------------------
The challenge for forming groups is that it is so tempting to just tell
everybody about what you are doing. This is only an issue because there are
so many forming groups. Personally, I'm being paid by Coho/US to care about
forming groups. There is almost nobody else being paid to care about you. I
keep hearing about, and receiving emails from people who are broadcasting
their mails to anybody and everybody, when such a small percentage of
recipients actually want to receive them. One of our challenges is that open
forums like Coho-L, the Cohousing Website Classified Ads and Directory, make
it so easy for people to harvest email addresses for their mailing lists.

Ideally, we can all figure out ways to reach those people who do care, while
avoiding SPAMing lots of other cohousers, just because they might know
somebody that might serve your group's needs.

I would like to share a bit about how Coho/US is dealing with our mailing
lists.

Coho/US has a database of many thousands of email addresses, many with more
complete information that we sometimes use to contact folks via mail or
phone. We have just begun to use this database more extensively... we
recently hired Lisa Biskup from RoseWind Cohousing as our database manager.
It is my hope that Lisa, using our new CiviCRM-based contact management
system, will really get our act together so we can effectively communicate
with people who want to receive our mailings.

The way permission-based email is intended to work is that we send a mailing
of a particular type to only those people who have requested information on
that topic. What this means - practically speaking (today) - is that
whenever you get an email from Coho/US on a topic you have no interest in,
you can open the email and click a link near the bottom of the email to
unsubscribe. After you do that, and then respond to the confirmation
email, you will no longer receive emails of that type from Coho/US - we,
obviously, have no control over any other group and some of them are very
likely to send you cohousing-related emails if your email address is
publically accessible, say in the Coho-L archives...

To make this a little clearer, at the moment I'm writing this, another
Conference Bulletin sharing new information on the 2008 National Cohousing
Conference is currently in the process of being sent (I just checked and
10.95% of that mail job is now done - its a BIG list and the mails are
dribbled out by our automated system to help avoid triggering automated SPAM
filters). The small number of people who Unsubscribed in response to
Conference Bulletin #1 (sent March 11) will not receive this email. Any of
you who do not want to receive future Conference Bulletins from Coho/US, can
also just open today's or any future Conference Bulletin mail and click the
Unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email.

This model is being used for all mailings from Coho/US. We really don't want
to annoy people with information they don't want to receive - it wastes your
valuable attention, and doing this lowers our value to you. As time goes on,
we'll also give you all the ability to visit your individual profile to make
changes about what you do receive from us - currently, all you can do is say
either (1) stop sending me emails of this type = "Unsubscribe" or (2) stop
sending me emails of any kind = "Opt Out" - you can take either of these
actions using the links at the bottom of every email that we send.

Thanks for your ongoing attention and support - and hope to see you in
Boston on June 12 (have I mentioned we're having a National Cohousing
Conference?)

Craig Ragland

Coho/US executive director
http://www.cohousing.org
craig [at] cohousing.org

New Earth Song project manager
http://www.NewEarthSong.com
craig [at] newearthsong.com

Songaia Cohousing member
http://www.Songaia.com
craig [at] songaia.com

Please try email first, include your phone number (w/time zone) - or give me
a call: 425-487-3550 (Pacific)... communicate!

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