Keeping Your Lists Updated
The ‘paperless’ office is pretty much a joke these days. Email seems to generate much more of it, but even if we don’t print it off, we still have lots to read and catch up on - if we want to keep up to date with the world. The world has grown ’smaller’ but with it the amount of stuff we want to know and read has increased considerably. This leads us to being on lots and lots of lists and it’s easy to lose control of what we’ve subscribed to and where those things are on the web.
I started subscribing to lists back in 1997 or perhaps even earlier, definitely before spam became a problem and so every man and his dog seemed to end up with my address as it got passed or sold from one person to another. Of course spam legislations and other rulings now make that a ‘no no’ but it doesn’t change what has taken place in the past. The end result is that people tend to get an email address that they use for subscriptions only and then change it if the spam gets too much. And that’s where a new challenge comes - to the owners of the lists you want to stay on.
I frequently get emails from people asking me to change their details on my, or my clients’ broadcast lists. Or autoresponders that say ‘Johnnie doesn’t use this address anymore, please update your file to xxxx’. I guess that seems fair enough to the owner of that address but what about the list owner when they get this multiple times? Suddenly they’re faced with having to set aside time to update addresses on their lists. Not to mention all the old addresses that need culling.
Many lists I belong to (and those I use) allow you to click on a link and update the listing yourself and I encourage you to do so. Or if you want to get off a list, use the Cancel link rather than emailing the people who own the list to ask them to remove you - much less time and keystrokes involved for all. And it’s easier.
And if you’re sick of changing addresses constantly, consider using a good spam filter online and then add the addresses of the lists you want to stay on, to the safe list so they can get through. I use spamarrest and this has worked well for me for several years now. KMT
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