Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Advertising available houses on this list

As a long time member of this list, I wish to say that I have 

absolutely no objection

to people advertising coho houses for sale or rent on this list.

Racheli.

-----Original Message-----
From: Craig Ragland [mailto:craigragland [at] gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 05, 2008 10:53 AM
To: Cohousing-L
Subject: [C-L]_ On sending Cohousing-related permission-based emails

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!
_________________________________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/

_________________________________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/

_________________________________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/

Re: Advertising available houses on this list	<– Date –> <– Thread –>
From: Racheli Gai (rachelisonoracohousing.com)
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 11:50:21 -0700 (PDT)