RealData Recommends SparkLIST for Client Newsletters

Help, Take Me Off Your List (Continued)... Last Friday's Dispatch, What's the Best Way to Reduce Those Pesky E-mails? generated a number of responses. ... First, Steve Bram, President of George Smith Partners, called to assure me personally that my name was now off his weekly e-newsletter.  Thanks!  His company takes its newsletter very seriously with one person devoting a full day to it each week.  That's terrific, and it shows in the authoritative commentary and attractive graphic format.   Bram tells me that future issues will have clear instructions for un-subscribing.  So if you're interested in the financial markets, subscribe.  

Second, Frank Gallinelli at RealData, which provides real estate investment analysis software, raved about SparkLIST for mailing list management.  After hassling with the maintenance of their mailing list in-house, "We found what I think is a terrific solution to our problem -- SparkLIST.  Subscribers still sign up at our web site, but SparkLIST manages the list.  They add the new sign-ups, deliver our newsletter and purge the undeliverable addresses -- and every message includes a subscriber-specific link to unsubscribe.   We just write the content and send it off.   The service accomplishes two important goals for us: It makes it much easier for us to get timely messages out to our subscribers and helps ensure that we don't antagonize people who no longer want our newsletter."

Finally, several readers pointed out that some unscrupulous spammers use a bogus unsubscribe feature to collect legitimate e-mail addresses!  So don't even try to unsubscribe unless a company looks legit.   And you can always use the anti-spam features of your e-mail program to block messages.  For example, Microsoft's Outlook has a very sophisticated Rules Wizard that enables you to block message using a variety of criteria -- like sender, subject or keyword.  Good luck in your battles to fight e-mail overload!

--Peter Pike / ppike@pikenet.com